Forgotten Hope
by Carlough
Summary: Heroes live and heroes die. Sometimes brothers are polar opposites and families are full of secrets. Sometimes little brothers are forgotten, torn from all they know and shoved alone into a confusing world. And sometimes a few kind mutants can help them.
1. Icebreaker

**I came up with this idea almost half a year ago, and as a birthday gift to myself I'm posting it. I can't guarantee swift updates, but I never dump a story, even if I grow to hate it (and I assure you I won't hate this).**

**This is extremely AU for both continuities. I have skewed all timelines to the point where I won't ever mention a specific year in here, because things are so squished together. People's ages have been messed with and reduced, as you'll see. What may have taken ten years in canon may be moved to a matter of months – it all depends on how I can fit things together, which is a mix n' match, cut n' paste sort of thing. The order of events has not been changed, but the times that they occurred have been. Also, this is kind of OC-centric. If you don't like any of this, leave now.**

**Another thing – there will be slash, yaoi, boy-love, whatever you want to call it. If you don't like it, again, you know where the back button is on your browser. Don't say I didn't warn you, and if you give me crap I will openly mock you, and maybe report you if I'm bored and what you say is against the rules for comments.**

**In case you're wondering, I am very familiar with Watchmen, both the movie and the graphic novel, and I have seen all movies in the X-Men movie 'verse. My extra Deadpool knowledge comes from my lovely friend **_**rawhidewolf**_**, who kindly lets me bounce ideas off of her.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men or Watchmen or any of their characters – they belong to their respective owners. I do own Jack and the situations used here.**

* * *

On a particularly cold and wet New York City night, the Comedian's doorbell rang.

Now, being that his main line of work at the time was as a masked vigilante with occasional government ties, he wasn't exactly a person who was often visited without advance knowledge. He had no family to speak of, and no real friends unless you counted his "comrades in crimefighting," as Captain Metropolis would call them, and they barely tolerated him and usually openly hated him. Friends indeed.

Thus, on that night Eddie Blake was racking his brain, trying to think of who would be calling at such a late hour. His pizza had already been delivered and he was almost sure that he had given the correct amount of change, considering he had counted it out before getting completely hammered as his nightly regimen required.

Had he ordered a stripper in his inebriated state? He did call in girls every once in a while when he was feeling, ahem, lonely and didn't have a "date" for the night planned, but he couldn't recall doing so any time that night.

So who the hell was now pounding on his apartment's door at eleven at night?

Granted, being a masked vigilante he should have been out doing his civic duty or some bullshit like that, whatever sugarcoated term Metropolis was using this week to describe the heinous things they did. However, he had been a bit on the slow side the night before, and he had royally screwed up.

After who knew how long as the Comedian, one might have hoped he would have been able to avoid being shot. But he hadn't, and prying a bullet out of your own leg hurt like a bitch. Sewing your own wounds using whiskey as an anesthetic wasn't much better.

He had stayed in tonight to give his wound that small amount of time to heal. It wasn't like his nightly patrols of the city knocking around some street punks was really going to staunch the flow of disgusting activity that filled the vile streets of New York.

For a moment a sense of déjà vu passed through his mind, but he ignored it – good thing, because he hadn't yet met the person who his sense of déjà vu reminded him of.

The pounding on the door continued.

"I'm coming, for Chrissake!" he called in a slurred tone. Huh, usually his voice didn't slur until beer number four. Then again, there _were_ five empty bottles lined up next to his couch. That might explain something.

After stumbling to the door, to his triumph not falling on his face when he tripped over the open pizza box, Eddie clumsily pulled back the multiple deadbolts on his door and wrenched it open, staring blearily at the person in front of him.

"Who the hell're you?" he slurred bluntly. Eddie was pretty sure he had never seen the old broad in front of him before.

The woman scowled, putting emphasis on the wrinkles that were crinkling her plain face. "Men, can't remember a damned thing, like who they've slept with!"

Okay, now Eddie was just confused. "Um...what?"

The woman sneered at him. "Two years ago you 'hired' me, you moron. You brought me back here, we did the nasty, you paid me. End of story, so I thought."

In his state of semi-drunkenness, Eddie was a little slow. "Uh... Are you sure?" How drunk _was_ he, to have been with that harpy?

She scoffed and began wheezing heavily, the hacking coughs of a longtime smoker. "Yes I'm sure, jackass. 'Cause I got this thing out of it!" With her foot she nudged something on the ground.

Slowly, Eddie's eyes drifted to the dirty hallway floor. A toddler sat at the woman's feet, looking up at him with big blue eyes peering out of a pale face from under a shock of messy black hair.

The Comedian suddenly felt sick to his stomach, and considering how good he was at holding his liquor, that probably wasn't the cause. "What are you saying?"

The woman rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. "I'm saying that 'cause of you, I gave birth to a freakin' kid. Do I look like the kinda gal who needs a kid around? No! I did you a favor, kept him 'til he was old enough to eat solid food. That's more than I should've done for the brat, two years of my hard-earned money wasted on the whelp. Already wasted my cash on the other ungrateful brats. I'm done looking after him; he's yours now."

Suddenly Eddie found his mind clearing. "Excuse me, _whore_? What makes you think he's _my_ child, hmm? And better yet, what makes you think that I'm going to take him? Do I look like someone who wants to raise a child? How the hell did you even find where I live?" With dark realization, he noticed that he recognized the bitchy tones of that woman. But even if he had slept with her, he still wasn't taking the kid.

She smiled smugly. "I know he's yours because I'm not an idiot – I can count days, and your name is on the birth certificate. That's what you get for introducing yourself. How did I find you? I know how to use a phonebook, you ass. Besides, you took me back here. And I know you're going to take him because I know who you are, _Comedian_."

Eddie almost flinched at his secret identity. Vaguely he recalled bringing her to his apartment and after doing the deed, finding her trolling for valuables and coming across his costume which he had left out in one of his many stupors. She had responded to threats and a bribe then, but just barely.

Damn it, now the bitch had him pinned. He was damned if he took the kid and damned if he didn't. She was so lustful for money; she would sell him out in a heartbeat if she could have, but instead she passed the kid off on him.

"Why didn't you just get an abortion?" Eddie stared at the child who stared back at him. Prostitutes didn't often keep their bastard children – it tended to impede business unless their clients were kinky or desperate.

"Couldn't afford one. Couldn't put it up for adoption because they wouldn't have treated him right. Would've given him to some stuck-up yuppie couple who would've turned him into a pansy freak." She reached in her pocket and pulled out a cigarette, lighting it with a practiced ease. Eddie was mildly surprised that she seemed to care for the child, on some small, twisted level. "You're lucky I'm not even asking for money to keep quiet. Take the damned kid and I won't spill your name. Got it?"

Before Eddie could reply, she nudged the kid over the threshold and into the apartment and thrust a stack of papers into Eddie's hands. He blinked and she was already at the end of hallway, and then she was gone.

He looked at the papers in his hands, legal documents pertaining to the kid. The birth certificate said his name was Jonathan Matthew Blake, son of Sylvia Joanna Kovacs and Edward Morgan Blake. Well, damn.

Wait... this thing said the kid was born in January. He had slept with that bitch in December, thirteen months before the kid was born. It was one thing he was sure of, because he remembered passing those stupid holiday display cases in front of the department stores while taking her back to his place. Unless this had been the longest pregnancy ever, this wasn't his kid!

But she knew his name. Damn it, she probably knew it wasn't his kid, but couldn't pass it off on the real father because she had no dirt on him to blackmail him into it! That conniving bitch!

While Eddie was seething, glaring at a wall in the dimly lit hallway, the two-year old boy at his feet looked up at him questioningly and made a soft noise of confusion. Eddie's head shot down.

"What are you looking at?" he sneered at the toddler, who didn't reply, as he had expected. The vigilante sighed. "Let's get you inside, I guess, and I'll try to find someone to pass you off on. Maybe Sally will want another kid..."

He frowned. No, he had done enough to Sally, and she had enough on her plate raising his biological kid. He smiled a little thinking of Laurel Jane. The girl didn't know him, but he sure knew her. It was just that her mother wouldn't let him see her, ever. She thought he was unfit to be around children. Hell, he agreed with her, but he should still be allowed to see his own daughter!

If he hadn't been drunk and uncoordinated, Eddie would have snapped his fingers. That was it! He would raise this kid and prove to Sally that he wasn't a total jackass, and then she would let him see Laurie and she would forgive him and he could have them both...

Pulling his mind back from his happy, highly unlikely fantasies, Eddie forced himself to address the task at hand – a toddler who he had no idea how to raise. "What the hell am I supposed to do with you..." He consulted the paper again. "...Jonathan..."

Jonathan, what a terrible name. Too stiff, too formal for a kid who was currently drooling all down his chin. "I ain't calling you that. What about...Jack? Yeah, I can live with that. Jack it is, runt."

The newly dubbed Jack cocked his head to the side, paused for a moment, and then threw up on Eddie's bare feet.

The Comedian scowled at the mess. _You're doing this to get Sally back, _he reminded himself. _Don't kill the kid and you could get Sally back, and you could see your daughter._

Desperately trying to think on the bright side of things, Eddie stared at the child and said, "Eh, least I'm not wearing socks."

That was probably the only upside of that night.

Eddie had no place to put the kid, so at first he dumped it on his couch, threw a blanket on it, and then went off to his own bed for the night. That didn't work, because the thing woke up shrieking like some unholy creature of the night – no, not the Comedian – and wouldn't stop screaming until Eddie came out and _held_ it, and oh, what a picture that was: Edward Blake, the feared and revered Comedian, holding a two-year old child while looking at it like it was the most disgusting thing he had ever seen in his life.

When the child had calmed Eddie put the sleepy toddler back on the couch and went back to bed. This cycle was repeated at least once more.

The next time he woke he found the boy nestled next to him in his bed, asleep, and damned if he knew how it got there. He stared at the child, affronted.

"How the hell did you get here?" He couldn't fathom how such a small child would have made it onto the bed, but at the moment he was too tired to care, and his hangover was starting up with a vengeance. Shaking his head – and wincing at the effect it brought his aching head – he turned over and tried to ignore the kid.

If he was lucky, he would "accidentally" smother it in the night.

The next morning he was woken up at the ungodly hour of ten, not by the child, amazingly, but by a pounding on his door. Eddie threw himself out of bed, trying to ignore the way his head was pounding in time with the knocks, and stumbled to the door of his apartment. Once again throwing back the deadbolts, he was deciding to just kill whoever was on the other side of the door when he opened it to reveal – oh damn, he couldn't kill _them._ Great, just friggin' great, now he was angry and wanted to hurt something and he couldn't because they were just kids. The Comedian was a randy jackass, but he didn't hurt kids – that was, unless they deserved it.

"Are you Edward Blake?" asked the older one. He was some redhead kid in his teens with a mug only a mother could love. Freckles splashed across his face, which was almost a little apelike in appearance. This kid was definitely not winning any beauty contests anytime soon. And what was with that voice? He spoke in a creepy, almost monotonous tone, his eyes half-closed as if he didn't really care about the answer.

But the steely emotion in his eyes showed that he did.

"What if I am?" he grumbled. Damn, he could use a cigar about now.

"Is he here? Is he here?" Eddie looked down with disdain at the disturbance. With one hand firmly clenched in the jacket of the redhead was a brunet boy of about ten who looked nothing like the red-haired teen. His skin wasn't as pale and was completely devoid of the other's freckles, and his features showed that he would grow up to be quite the charmer – that was, if he wasn't so busy hopping around like the Easter Bunny on crack.

"Wade." The redhead said that one word and the younger boy calmed, but Eddie could swear he was vibrating with excitement. The older of the boys looked back up at Eddie.

"Are you Edward Blake?" he repeated.

Feeling benevolent, and really just wanting to get rid of these kids, he nodded sharply. "Yeah, what do you want?"

The teenager watched him with those creepy eyes, nonplussed. "A woman gave you a toddler last night." It wasn't a question.

Eddie felt a little defensive now. "What makes you think that?" Best not to give himself away before he had to.

A loud wail came from his bedroom, drawing a wince from Eddie, both at being found out and because the screaming wasn't helping his hangover one bit. Dammit, there went his plan.

"He's here!" cried the young boy. He let go of the elder's coat and shoved past Eddie, following the sound of the cries into the vigilante's bedroom, paying no heed to the fact that he was blatantly and rudely ignoring the other's privacy. Eddie would have run after the kid, but he was kind of in shock at the boy's audacity.

There was a growl from the redhead before he, too, shoved past Eddie, heading after the younger of the two.

Eddie shook his head, at a complete loss. "Sure, c'mon in!" he called after the two. With a sigh and a hand pressed to his pounding head, he shut the door and followed the boys back to his bedroom.

He was surprised to see that the young boy had made himself comfortable on his bed and had Jack sitting in his lap. The toddler was still sniffling a little, but he was calming quickly at the little phrases the boy was cooing to him.

As soon as Eddie entered the room, the boy's head shot up. "Do you not know how to change a pull-up? What kind of caretaker are you? Did you even _try_ to get him to use the toilet?" He shook his head as if he was ashamed by the adult before he swung a backpack off his shoulder and onto the bed and dug through it, pulling out a clean pull-up. "He'll never learn if nobody teaches him."

Deciding to play along, Eddie leaned against the doorframe and raised an eyebrow. "_You_ are going to change him?"

The boy thrust the pull-up and the toddler at the redhead. "Walter."

The teenager sighed and rolled his eyes before he picked up the toddler and, without a word to the owner of the apartment, stalked into the bathroom attached to the bedroom and closed the door.

Confused and a little amused by the situation, Eddie decided to stare at the kid on his bed, who stared back before a bright, sunny grin lit his face and he began to babble.

"Hi, I'm Wilson, Wade Wilson. Doesn't that make me sound like 007? I think so, but Walter just rolls his eyes at me. He's the red-haired guy, Walter Kovacs. He's my big brother. Well, half-brother – we have different dads. That's why we have different last names."

"Uh-huh." Eddie nodded his head as if he understood the hyperactive runt. "And, uh, why did you decide to come barging into my home?"

"For Jack, of course!" Eddie reeled a bit when he heard someone use his newly given name for the toddler. "Well, mom probably just told you his name was Jonathan. Actually, she probably just gave you the papers and didn't say his name at all. But it's Jonathan, and we call him Jack 'cause he's too little to have such a big name."

"Wait a minute, the kid's your brother?" The Comedian rubbed the back of his head in confusion. All he wanted to do was pass out somewhere without any lights, but he couldn't do that with these weird kids in his home.

"Of course!" Wade raised an eyebrow at him. "You aren't very quick on the uptake, are you? Never fear, I'll explain everything. Okay, see, our mom – well, she's not actually a mom, really just the person who gave birth to us – anyways, she's a whore."

It was Eddie's turn again to raise a brow. "Aren't you a little young to be saying things like that?"

Wade looked affronted. "I'm eleven years old! Besides, Walter says it all the time, but he says I'm not supposed to, so don't tell him I did. Where was I? Oh yeah, so our mom's a whore, so she ended up with three unexpected kids over the years. First came Walter, obviously. Next came me, and then Jack. He's only two. Mom doesn't like us, so she ships us all off to our dads. Well, me and Jack; Walter's dad ran out when he was little, and mom couldn't find where he went, but she knew who my dad was – or at least she decided she did – and she pawned me off on him. I think she blackmailed him into it, 'cause he hates me. Is that what she did to you?"

Astonished, Eddie nodded slowly. "Very astute of you." Silently, he cursed himself for spending too much time around those stuck up pricks that called themselves his comrades. Their stupid vocabularies were rubbing off on him.

The boy laughed. "I guessed, 'cause you don't seem like the type who likes kids, either. So what'd she get you for?"

Eddie's eyes narrowed in, surprisingly, a good-natured way. "It wouldn't be very good blackmail if it was something I go around spouting off to every runt I see, now would it?"

Wade gaped. "I am _not_ a runt! I'll grow taller when I hit puberty!"

There was a soft snort from the teenager exiting the bathroom, who held Jack in his arms. The toddler sat happily in his hold, muttering little statements to the boy who was apparently his oldest brother, though the three boys looked nothing alike.

At that moment Eddie realized that he hadn't heard one word from the toddler until now. There had been screaming, yes, and crying, but no actual talking, or even gibberish. Wondering why this was, he said, "Huh, kid can talk. Why was he so quiet before, then?"

Walter simply stared at him, apparently allowing Wade to explain. "He was probably just scared, that's all. You don't look like you've been very kind to him. You gotta smile lots, or else he thinks you're upset with him, and Jack stops talking when people are upset with him. Babies are real good at telling someone's mood, you know."

Again, Eddie just nodded. "Yeah, and if you two are so good with kids and all, why did your, ahem, _mother_ dump the brat here, and better yet, what the hell are you doing in my apartment?"

"Language," Walter chastised with narrowed, annoyed eyes. Eddie just glared right back. For God's sake, his head was pounding, some bitch had dumped a kid on him that wasn't even his, and he really, really didn't want to be stuck with these two idiots to top it all off.

Once again, Wade decided to explain. "We've been looking after him all the time, 'cause he's our brother and we couldn't just leave him with mom. She shouldn't have had Jack anyway 'cause the court deemed her an unfit mother and that's why Walter lives in a foster home -" This received a glare from said brother, which Wade ignored with aplomb. "- and I live with my dad, or supposed dad, so I really don't know how she held onto Jack for so long or anything, other than the government just doesn't care anymore, which is fine by me 'cause then me and Walter still get to see Jack. We went looking to see him this morning and mom said she gave him to you, so now we're here to see him!"

Eddie stared for a moment. "Wait, see him? You mean you ain't taking him with you?"

Wade laughed as if this was the most hilarious thing he'd heard in a long time. Damn, that talkative kid was a freak.

"My dad would never let me take him back to our place, being that he hates me already, and Walter's foster family can't take him. They don't even know that the three of us still see each other, 'cause they don't care about anything that doesn't involve a check from the government, but that's fine with us."

"And how old are you?" The question was aimed at Walter, but the teenager didn't answer past a grunt. Wade, per usual, spoke up.

"He's seventeen, but almost eighteen. That's why my dad let's me go with him places. Well, actually he doesn't care, but if anyone asks him that's what he says."

Eddie grunted in response and was silent. In fact, so were the other occupants of the room with the exception of Jack, who was mumbling nonsense to himself.

Suddenly, Wade shot to a stand. He moved over to Walter and took Jack from him, moving the toddler in his arms until he was in a more comfortable position. "Who's a good boy?" he cooed.

"Jack!" the little boy replied with a sunny smile.

Deep in Eddie's chest, a trickle of water dripped from his heart of ice.

Wade smiled and bounced him a little. "And who am I?"

"Wade!"

Eddie fought a quirk of a smile.

"And who's this?" He gestured at his older brother.

"Walty!" The dubbed "Walty" grimaced slightly, but remained silent.

Okay, this just _wasn't fair._

Wade pointed at Eddie. "And this is Eddie. He's gonna be your new daddy. Can you say 'Daddy'?"

The little boy screwed up his face in confusion, as if thinking this over in his diminutive head. Abruptly his smile returned and he set it on Eddie, full force.

It was as if a blow-dryer set on "high" had been pointed at the ice-heart.

"Hi Daddy!" Jack called, beaming with joy at his own small statement. He even waved a bit.

A crack formed in the ice.

Eddie told himself the look on his face was only because he was surprised at being called..._that_ and he didn't know that two-year olds talked so much. After all, he hadn't been around any since he was one.

The Comedian shook his head. He was stuck with Jack, and apparently his brothers came as a bonus pack. Well, if they wanted to visit, then he could at least use them as free babysitters. Might as well make the best of their presence.

"So how do you take care of the kid, anyway?"

Wade looked aghast, and even the stoic, enigmatic Walter raised a brow. Then the younger brother smiled at the boy in his arms. "Don't worry Jackie; we'll set your daddy straight."

"Daddy!" he repeated, still beaming widely.

The ice shattered.

* * *

**Well, I like that beginning well enough. Question: I want to do one chapter from the "past" like this one and one from the "present" after it, alternating like this for most of the story (until I run out of "past" ones). Does anyone mind this? Heck, is anyone going to review this? No, probably not, but if you do give your input before the next chapter I will take it into consideration.**

**Please review, if you would be so kind. I need to know that **_**somebody**_** is reading this.**


	2. Runaway

**I'm surprised at the response that this story has received; it's more than I'd expected, that's for sure, and I'm eternally grateful for it. As I mentioned previously, chapters will be far between (and school isn't helping the case much) but I'll never drop this story. I have big, big plans for it.**

**I just wanted to touch on a small pet peeve here for a moment. When writing what I refer to as "Lil Jack" ("Big Jack" is in this chapter) I looked into how I should write his speech pattern; some research was done. What I found was highly interesting. **

**Everyone has read stories before where a young character uses a different speech pattern than adults, given their age. Here's a fact on it: all of those kids using "w"s instead of the "r" sound? Yeah, they must have speech impediments, because in a case of normal development children learn the "r" sound before "w." That means that if they're saying "Oh, weally?" or the like, then they need a speech therapist, desperately. Also, kids speak in at least small phrases by age two, but not full, advanced, compound, complex sentences. The worse case I've ever seen is a supposed fsix year old speaking like this ("w"s instead of "r"s and complicated, compound sentences) while he explains to his divorcing parents that they can alternate custody of him – yes, I'm serious. That's the most blatant case I've found of someone who needs to go hang out with little kids before writing them. **

**But what I'm getting at here is (and I haven't had any comments about this as of yet, but I like to be paranoid and preemptive), if you think Jack's speech pattern as a kid is too advanced or too simple, you can tell me, but give me actual facts to back it up. Look things up first; don't just rely on bad fanfiction you've been reading. That's all I wanted to say; sorry for wasting your time, people! ;D**

**By the way, this chapter, the start of the "present," begins well after the events of Watchmen and after the first X-Men movie (and, consequently, X-Men Origins: Wolverine). It could be said that this starts as an alternate beginning to X-Men 2, because I don't plan to follow canon after the first movie ('cause I don't really care about Jean Grey, as you'll see). Also, Jack accidentally seems to come off extra-emo this chapter - that's not his normal personality, he's just being paranoid and a bit of a jerk due to stress and a lack of human interaction of late. Just so you know (I hate it when people write their "totally awesome kickass emo OC").**

**Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men or Watchmen or any of their characters – they belong to their respective owners. I do own Jack and the situations used here.**

* * *

Jack Blake was running for his life.

He wasn't a stranger to this, to running. He had been running for quite some time now. Running from social services, from the police, from his school, from his past. From himself. He was an expert on running away from things.

But running for his life was a new one.

Frankly, he had no idea who – or what – he was running from. He had been sitting in a diner this morning when this had all started. As he had sipped at his coffee, a customer had entered the establishment. At first he hadn't thought anything of it; what was another person to him? But the person had walked in and frozen upon spotting Jack. The teen had felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand at alert, and he barely repressed a shiver. He hated being watched when he couldn't watch back.

Jack had ignored the sensation and the man; he could recognize the gender from the heavy sound of boots on the floor. When the man took a seat next to him at the counter, he continued ignoring him in favor of picking at his waffles. He did love whipped cream on his waffles.

The man ordered coffee and the house special, whatever that was. Jack would have checked the menu, but that would have made an awkward situation. How did you explain to people that you weren't blind if they shut up? Not very easily, that was for sure. And with everyone's new fear – well, he was content to remain hidden behind the large, thick black sunglasses he constantly wore and let them do all the talking.

Jack had been on the road for over a year by now, living off of what Eddie had left him. It wasn't easy, being fifteen and alone in the world, but he liked to think that he pulled it off quite nicely. As long as he acted like he belonged, he could get away with acting as an eighteen-year old because his glasses hid most of his face. Being fifteen in actuality made things a little harder for him. _Fifteen and a half_, he reminded himself in a sing-song voice.

Yes, fifteen and a half, and he had spent his last year running from absolutely nothing. He was doing a damned good job of it, if he did say so himself. Until the man had showed up.

He had continued ignoring the man, keeping up the pretense that he couldn't see him, and in his defense he couldn't: the diner was a pretty noisy place. So he was surprised when the man spoke.

"You look familiar, kid."

The voice was gruff and harsh, and it had just the slightest bit of a rasp that indicated a smoker of some sort, if his finely tuned sense of hearing wasn't off – and it never was. It was almost vaguely familiar, but he wasn't going to give the man that satisfaction. Just because someone seemed like he had a familiar voice didn't mean Jack wasn't remembering someone he would rather forget. For all he knew, this was an enemy.

"I doubt it," he replied softly, keeping his gaze firmly downward. He probably couldn't see through the haze of the diner anyway, but if he attempted the man would know he could see something, and he wasn't so sure he wanted this man to know more information about himself.

The man chuckled lightly as if he was amused by Jack's behavior. The teen did his best to keep from stiffening in anger. It was best to remain calm and collected, like nothing this stranger did could affect him.

"No, I'm pretty sure I recognize you. You look a lot like someone I saw once in a photo."

Jack seriously doubted this. He wasn't in any recent photographs that he could remember, and there weren't many of him as a kid, not that anyone would likely recognize him from one. Eddie and Walter weren't big on them, which was why the only picture he had of Eddie was from his old Minutemen days, when he was in the full original Comedian costume, and Walter – the only unmasked photos he had of his oldest brother came from his prison files.

Wade had been the one who took photographs, and his were lost with him somewhere in the jungles of the vast Earth. The military would never tell him exactly where his middle brother had been when he had disappeared. The only picture Jack had of him was from the front page of his military file. It wasn't much better than Walter's.

The man continued, oblivious to Jack's inner turmoil. "You see, I was at this academy recently."

"Fantastic," he interjected in a bored tone, but the man carried on.

"And at this academy, there were a few 'class pictures' in the front hall. Now, the school doesn't have too many students, so after being there for a while I learned most of their names, or at least knew their faces. I was looking at last year's picture, and there was this kid with black hair who I had never seen before. I asked around, and apparently he was some runt who had went running off in the dead of night, and nobody had seen or heard from him since. Now, imagine my surprise when I come up here on a completely unrelated trip and happen across a guy in a diner who looks just like the kid I saw in the picture. The kid's name was Jonathan Blake. Sound familiar?"

Jack gripped his coffee mug so tightly he thought it might crack. "I'm not a runt," he hissed to himself at a level too low for human ears to pick up on. Only Eddie ever called him a runt, and this man was _definitely_ not Eddie. He may have had the same overly confident, gruff tone and given off the same scent of cigars, but this was not his adoptive father.

"Don't like being called a runt, Jack?"

He jolted and his control slipped in surprise. The sounds of the diner hit him in a harsh tidal wave, like someone had clapped a pair of giant cymbals around his head.

In the kitchen the cook was shouting for more hash browns but his assistant was on his phone with his girlfriend, trying to make her believe that he didn't cheat on her; in his frustration the cook banged two pans together, the noise like a two-by-four to the head. A trucker on the other side of the diner was eating noisily, his fork and knife clicking together against the porcelain plate in an incessant ring and ding, each soft sound drawing a wince from the teenager.

The worst was the young family near the door. He had heard them tell their waitress that they were from Ontario, and were heading to Vancouver. Their infant son was screeching his hunger to his mother, who was desperately trying to calm him down, and thus ignoring her four-year old daughter who was wailing on and on about not wanting to sit in the car anymore while her husband argued with his secretary on his cell phone about if she had booked them the proper hotel suite.

The entire thing made Jack want to scream. Instead, he shut his eyes and gritted his teeth, doing his best to regain his control. If he opened his eyes, all he would see would be a writing mass of color bouncing across his vision like a kaleidoscope on steroids. Not even the close-by lenses of his sunglasses would be visible.

"You okay, kid?" asked the man next to him.

Jack flinched. Was he okay? He had thought he was, at least until he had let his control slip. But was he okay? That question had so many facets. Monetarily, yes, he was fine, and his physical health was golden on a long-term basis that ignored his current migraine and vision loss. Socially, he was lonely and unable to admit it due to his stubborn streak that he had somehow gained from Eddie. Mentally he wondered if he was a bit unstable like the doctors had started saying about Wade when he was in the military, like those accusations that had flown after his "disappearance" that had been more than a little suspicious. Emotionally he was a flaming train wreck with no survivors that was hit by a jumbo jet full of school children; not such a good place to be.

So was he okay? No, probably not in the least. But he wasn't going to tell some stranger that.

"Fine," he said through gritted teeth. "I'm just fine."

"You don't look fine to me."

"Yeah, well you don't know me. This is my happy face."

"Well damn, kid, now I wanna know what your pained face is."

Jack paused and his eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses. "That mean you gonna experiment?"

The man looked at him like he was insane, not that Jack could see because he was still refusing to turn his head. "I don't know who you've been hanging out with, bub, but that's not my style."

The teen relaxed, but barely. "You never know. When you're all you've got, you can't be too careful."

The other nodded, and the pair was silent. When the waitress next came around, Jack asked for his bill and paid with a credit card – he couldn't very well pull out his cash and start counting out bills, now could he? He could've lied and said that there were raised parts or something of the sort on the bills, but Jack was feeling lazy and this new guy was creeping him out.

"You leaving?" the man asked. Jack nodded sharply, intent on ignoring him as he jammed his recently returned credit card into his pocket. Oh, how he loved that nobody questioned a fifteen-year old with a credit card anymore. Maybe it was because of his clever disguise, or maybe it was just because society was filled with a bunch of spoiled brats. He was betting on the latter.

To Jack's dismay the man followed him out of the diner, slapping down a wad of cash on the counter and gulping down his scalding coffee in one go. He sped up his walking, keeping his head down with his chin tucked into the collar of his sweater as he shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. It was frigid for early fall. Great, one more reason to hate the season.

The man clapped a hand on his shoulder, drawing a flinch from Jack. "I never introduced myself. I'm Logan." He thrust a hand into Jack's view. After a moment with no reply, the man – Logan – chuckled to himself.

"I know you can see it, kid. You're not blind. Your steps are too sure to be blind, especially seeing that you don't have a cane or a dog to help you."

Slowly, Jack's head moved upwards. "You're wrong."

Well, a little, but actually he was right. Jack _wasn't_ blind, not in the traditional sense. He could see perfectly fine – it was just that _what_ he saw wasn't the same as what filled most people's vision, and his own personal sights tended to block out the real world. And when you couldn't see the world everyone else saw, you might as well be blind.

Logan cocked his head to the side, though Jack still refused to look at him and had no chance of seeing it, though in the calm of nature his vision had cleared somewhat, only bombarded with the violent, jumping lines of color from the nearby road when the occasional vehicle drove down it.

"No, I don't think I am. You can see, but something's getting in your way. Something to do with why you froze up in there."

"What're you saying?" If that man was even _implying_ what he thought he was, Jack would be out of there like a shot. He wasn't getting his ass handed into the government now, registration be damned.

"You know what I'm saying. You're a mutant." There was more to Logan's statement, a certain "like me" that would have made the whole following situation null and void, but Jack, true to his self-promise, was off running before Logan could finish.

Logan shook his head. Chuck better thank him for this – he was out here on his own soul-searching (or some other crap like that) trip; bringing back the kid would be his present to Chuck, if anything. He wasn't obligated to do anything, but damn it, the kid was definitely the runaway from the mansion, and he smelled _so familiar_. Something about the woods came off of him, and it wasn't just because that had been where the kid was hiding. It was scent-deep, blood-deep, and it was strikingly familiar in a way Logan would rather forget.

With a sigh and a muttered curse, he ran after the kid. His bike, or rather the motorcycle he had commandeered from One-Eye, had better be in that parking lot when he got back.

* * *

Jack snapped his fingers, watching a set of short purple waves float up through the mass of green, red, and blue forest sounds, returning to him quicker than usual. Deftly he jumped over the log set in front of him and continued on, snapping his fingers periodically and watching their shape and return to keep from tripping.

But he was so busy staring at the ground, trying not to lose his step that he didn't realize he was running head-first into a large maple tree that had grown in the center of his chosen path until it was too late. He fell backwards with a yelp of pain and a grunted curse, just barely catching himself on his forearms before he hit his head on another nearby tree.

The young mutant groaned as his arm muscles absorbed most of the shock from the fall. He struggled to pull himself to a sitting position, desperate to continue on, to get away from this person who threatened his current sense of "normal."

It seemed that it was not to be. As soon as Jack forced himself to a stand, wincing at the pain in his head and the vertigo that his already-skewed view of the world was experiencing, a hand clapped down on his shoulder with a vice-like grip.

"C'mon kid, I don't plan on hurting you, but I don't wanna have to chase you down again. Could you at least make things a little easier on me and just stay put this time?"

Jack winced but stopped his struggling, and instead cocked his head to the side, both to get a better feel for Logan's location and in thought. "How did you find me so easily? Was I really that loud and obvious?"

Logan laughed. "Nope, but you've got a fairly distinct smell. Sorta familiar; I probably recognized it from Chuck's place."

"Chuck? You mean Professor Xavier?" Jack turned around, shoulder still captive to Logan's grip.

"'Course I do. What, you didn't figure it out yet that I've been to the mansion?"

"Uh, no, I guessed that, but I've just never heard anyone call the professor that before."

"Well, I thrive on originality. Anyways, how about we sit down here and you tell me exactly why you freaked out on me back there."

Jack stiffened at the idea of a tell-all with a gruff stranger, and began scrambling for escape again. He didn't expect Logan to be so strong, though.

The man watched Jack in amusement as the teen twisted and writhed, trying in vain to pull his shoulder from the other's grip.

"I can do this all day, bub. Ready to settle down yet?"

The boy continued to struggle until Logan got bored and sat down on a rock, dragging the flailing boy down with him. "Sit," he commanded as one would a dog, and to his surprise the boy finally complied.

"So," Logan said after a long moment of silence. "What's your story, runt?"

"Long and uneventful. And I'm not a runt." It was much too familiar, much too similar to Eddie for Jack to be comfortable.

"Hmm, beg to differ on both accounts. But mostly, I think your little tale is at least somewhat interesting, right? I mean, kids don't just go running off from Xavier's everyday."

"I had my reasons," the teen muttered.

"Yeah, well how about you start telling me about that, huh?"

Jack shrugged Logan's hand off of his shoulder, and Logan, now sure that the boy wouldn't run away, let him. The teen brought his knees to his chest and crossed his arms over them, taking care to remove his sunglasses and tuck them into his jacket pocket before he pressed his forehead to the well-worn denim of his jeans. He inhaled slowly and shut his eyes, blocking out the heinous colors that forever danced merrily across his vision, and exhaled heavily as the sounds around him sharpened like a razorblade.

Idly, he wondered if other mutants had such problems with their own powers, and in Jack's mind it wasn't a matter of control. Anyone could learn to control their powers, with enough patience and training. Hell, he could better control his powers if he tried, but he happened to know for a fact that it was all in vain; he could sharpen his use of his powers, making it easier to utilize them for fighting or some sort of practical use, but he could never fully remove the mental strain his abilities produced. This stress, this pain and frustration that his powers put him through – he wondered if others had to deal with _that_.

Unbidden, other mutants he had met at the School came to his mind, which then categorized them all to see if they could possibly indeed face the same struggles as he did.

There was his old best friend St. John Allerdyce, a pyrokinetic. He'd had some big problems with his powers. But Johnny, as Jack had ever-so-annoyingly called him, had those age-old problems with control, or a lack thereof. The only injuries John's power brought were to people who got in his way when he was throwing a temper tantrum and the guilt John later felt over not being able to restrain himself better. Yet that wasn't like Jack; not even his best friend could fully understand just how much his own power could pain him.

Who else had he associated with at Xavier's School for Gifted Children? Not many, that was for certain. When he had come to the school he had been placed in a room with John, and the then-attention-starved boy had latched onto Jack, claiming the dark-haired boy as his best friend and daring any other to come between the two.

Jack, for his part, hadn't much minded. Other than his brothers, he'd never had any real friends, and the change was welcomed. He didn't need too many people in his life; he wouldn't know what to do with them all. One really good friend sufficed for him, and he hadn't interacted with many of the other students out of a classroom setting.

He'd talked with the teachers – _dork_, his mind called out at him. But really, he hadn't had enough contact with others to know how their powers affected them, and those he knew on a fair enough basis seemed to have no true problems other than a lack of control.

Ms. Munroe had never seemed to have any sort of problems, control or otherwise. Jack had always admired her for her always calm and collected demeanor, never losing her cool in any situation. She was the epitome of control, and he wished he could have been like her.

Mr. Summers was a different case. Jack had liked him in the way that any child feels about a so-so teacher; he wasn't a favorite, but he most definitely wasn't the worst. He was just sort of...there. Mr. Summers quite obviously had a few issues with his own ability, Jack could concede. Not only was it for the most part uncontrollable, but it hurt his eyes and potentially the others around him, giving him the same guilt complex that Johnny had felt. Maybe Jack could've related to Summers, if he had ever tried, but he'd been too wrapped up in his own inner-turmoil and self-pity to notice, and Mr. Summers, as nice as he tried to be, wasn't the most accessible person.

Well, unless you were one Dr. Jean Grey.

Jack didn't really care for Dr. Grey. Sure she was nice, and definitely pretty; more than once he had to groan as all of the other boys drooled over her and Mr. Summers followed her around like a loyal, abnormally dopey puppy-dog. Yet Jack never really received the impression that her ability pained her. He had heard about all of the extensive training she'd had to go through with the professor to keep from hearing every person's thoughts in the area, and of how annoying and frustrating it was for telepaths to have others minds constantly infringing on their own consciousness. But obviously Dr. Grey had her ability under a very strong control for it to never seem to bother her, and her telekinesis was always perfectly executed.

She was the poster-child for the mutant who came to control their wily powers with diligence, patience, and perseverance, and Jack wanted to beat her over the head for it, out of envy or annoyance, he wasn't sure.

Eddie would have laughed at her, called her stuck-up and commented that she probably had daddy issues that she worked through the same way, too, and then he would have made a joke that the perfect, always in control, enviable people like her were just part of the big joke that was Earth.

Walter would have called her a whore and been done with it.

The teen then thought on the one other person he had truly spoken with at the School: Professor Xavier himself. Most of the students had private sessions with Xavier, whether it be to talk about their lives or to assist with their powers, and many of them were in his classes. Jack, it seemed, had been his "special case" in that he received every form of treatment the paraplegic man offered, and more.

Since his arrival at the School Xavier had felt some odd need to keep tabs on Jack. At first it was because he was afraid that the boy wasn't acclimating well enough, then it was because Jack would only speak to John, who wasn't the best influence in the world, and then it was because he found out that Jack's powers had progressed so far beyond his control that Jack couldn't even see anymore. Whatever the issue, though, Jack was a daily visitor to the professor's office, much to his own dislike and chagrin.

If Ororo Munroe was the epitome of control, then Professor Charles Xavier was the ruling Grandmaster and Supreme Overlord Dictator. It seemed as if nothing fazed the man; nothing upset him, nothing surprised him, he just reacted to everything with that same easy confidence, control, and precision.

Coming from a life of temperamental, risk-taking, brash, sometimes-lunatic apparent-vigilantes, Jack was not at all prepared for Professor Xavier and his take on life. The dark-haired boy had a hard time connecting with the peaceful man on any sort of level, because he was not used to such a calm presence in his life, and frankly after all of the cheerful chaos that had been his childhood the professor's personal brand of tranquility did more to unnerve than soothe the young mutant.

In fact, his entire time at the School had been unnerving. Everything was so structured and organized. Even his unconventional friendship with John seemed to be preset and preapproved by the sleeping arrangements set up by the School's staff. Nothing about the place held that same spontaneous energy, that insane spark of life that he had known all of his life. The School wasn't comedic, or at least not in the way that he had come to know the term, and the entire life there seemed almost bland to the young boy. The people were nice, but nobody was quite the way he wished they were.

After all, nobody at the School got excited about enchiladas and Bea Arthur.

So in the end, Jack thought as he tried to bring his mind back from its foray into Wade's roundabout way of thinking, he had met nobody at the School with problems like his other than Mr. Summers, and the idea of having similarities with that man wasn't necessarily comforting. Yet Jack had never met a mutant outside of the School, so he had nobody to compare to in that aspect-

Actually, he _did_ know somebody outside of the School. But he – well, he didn't ever seem to have the slightest problems with his powers, Jack would leave it at that. He tried to avoid thinking of that particular person as much as was possible.

"Kid?"

Jack jolted as Logan nudged his side. He had forgotten that the other was there. It wasn't often that he had company, and he seemed to have inherited Wade's nasty habit of disappearing into his own world – the only difference was, Wade brought his own world to the real world.

"I'd really rather not talk about it."

"Why? We've got plenty of time; I've got nowhere to be, and you don't exactly seem to be following a schedule."

The dark-haired teen pressed his face further into his knees, feeling his kneecaps dig into his cheeks, a blissful distraction from his own growing discomfort with his situation. "It's personal."

"Ugh, great. That mean you're gonna get all emotional and weepy on me?"

Jack brought his head up sharply and scowled at the man. "I do not cry, and I most certainly do _not_ get 'emotional.'"

Logan only smiled and chuckled. "Sure you don't, kid, sure you don't."

"I don't," Jack insisted in a grumble, as if repeating the statement would make it fact. He rested the side of his head on his knees and watched Logan for what it was worth, catching glimpses of an outline through a haze of ever-jumping, always-moving lines. When he focused on ignoring the little sounds of the forest, enough of the lines faded away for him to make out the man's facial features.

The man, Logan, looked to be in his thirties, probably the later end of them, and he had wild, untamed dark hair and laughable sideburns. His eyes held a strange look, that of a man who seemed totally in control and yet always unsure of himself, like a great piece of him was missing. And yet, Jack could see in those eyes someone who had seen more than any man should ever see, _could_ ever see – and for some reason he was sure that Logan himself wasn't even aware of any of this.

As Jack continued scanning the man's face, trying to figure out if he was indeed as familiar as his voice had earlier suggested or if it was just a fluke of memory, he noticed one thing that had escaped him before: Logan was smirking at him, the kind of smug, shit-eating smirk that Eddie used to wear when he was inordinately proud of himself for something that would make someone (usually a woman) want to slap him.

"What's with the look?" Jack mumbled half-heartedly, trying to pretend that he really didn't care.

Logan simply shook his head at him. "Well first off, you just acknowledged that you can see-"

"It's complicated," Jack interrupted, but Logan continued on, pretending that he hadn't heard the teen.

"-and you've basically proven to me that you do, in fact, want to have a little sharing circle about what's happened with you. You've got that sad-puppy 'ask me about my life' look. No, don't look at me like that, it's true. You want to tell somebody what happened, why you left, but you're afraid 'cause you don't trust anyone. So the way I see it, I gotta stick around till you feel comfortable enough to tell me. It can be my payment to Chuck for helping me out. 'Sides, someone needs to look after you."

Jack was overcome with anger at the sheer presumptuous nerve he was experiencing. "I'm fine! I can handle myself!"

Logan just shook his head. "Humor me, then."

"Uh-huh, yeah. And why should I trust some human, huh? You'll probably just turn me into the feds for some quick cash."

The older man laughed. "Oh really?"

Jack flinched at the sound of metal unsheathing, sharp silver lines slicing his vision before they slowly filtered away through the atmosphere. He cast a nervous look at Logan, half-expecting to find a knife being held to his throat.

Three metal claws protruding from the knuckles of each hand wasn't much more assuring.

"Still think I'm gonna hand you in?" Logan asked.

Jack shook his head nervously, eyes only for the long dagger-like claws. "Yeah, I believe you. And, uh, you can stick around and do whatever the hell you want. Just, could you, ah, put those away?"

Logan only laughed as he sheathed the claws, and Jack frowned indignantly – he hated being mocked, but he wasn't going to let the guy with the claws know that. Then again, he probably already knew.

So that was how Jack Blake, after running away from Xavier's School for Gifted Children and living alone for a year and a half, gained a babysitter. Who would've guessed that one day he would look back on this moment fondly?

Jack scowled at Logan, who took one look at his face, thought of pouting toddlers, and promptly regained that Eddie-like smirk.

So who would have guessed that Jack would remember this moment fondly? Not Jack, that was for sure.

* * *

**I am purposely (and hopefully, tastefully) not saying exactly what Jack's power is. I'm dropping a lot of hints about it, but purposely doing so from Jack's POV where he already knows what his mutation is so you only get a taste of it; it's something that really can only be understood with a "big picture" explanation, which I want to avoid giving until Lil Jack learns for himself. That means that by the next time there's a "present" chapter, Logan will already have been told what his power is. ;) Evil? Why yes, yes I am.**

**That's all I can think of that needs to be addressed here, soo...please review!**


	3. Visitations

**So here we are – yes, it took a while, but still. This isn't very long, but it's important, so pay attention! ;D No Walter in this one, but if you know your canon you'll understand just where he's off to. **

**Ooh, guess what? I finally got some Deadpool comics! I had to order them online, but I'm still enjoying them immensely. So, what series do you guys suggest? I've got volume one of Classics and I've found I like that one, and I've got the first three of the Daniel Way series. I've decided I'm not touching Cable & Deadpool stuff for a long while, simply due to how much there is, but does anyone have other suggestions? Favorites, perhaps?**

**Anyways, there are multiple Wade-references here, just 'cause, and a lot of canon implications that you might not totally catch – if you have any issues with any of them, just ask. And sorry for OOC-ness - it was necessary.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men or Watchmen or any of their characters – they belong to their respective owners. I also don't own Smallville, Golden Girls (and of course the late great Bea Arthur), the Smurfs, or **_**I Can't, Said the Ant. **_**I do own Jack and the situations used here. And Mr. Morton the Mole is mine!**

* * *

"Daddy?"

Oversized blue eyes stared up at him, wide, innocent, and oh-so-unsuspicious. Really, he would have thought it was harder to go around his apartment in-costume without his new "son" equating him with his alter-ego. The kid knew who the Comedian was – he religiously watched the news when anything about vigilantes was on, much to Eddie's pride and chagrin – and he had memorized the names of any and all vigilantes to have ever hit the streets of New York and last more than a week.

But for some reason he never quite realized that the Comedian's costume and "Daddy's funny pajamas" were the same thing.

"Daddy? Where're y'going?" Jack cocked his head to the side curiously, a habit he had recently picked up from Wade. That influential little bastard...

He sighed loudly. "I gotta go out for a bit, JJ, you know that. Wade's coming by any minute now to stay with you."

Eddie had originally found the boy's nickname – bestowed by Wade, of course – to be corny, but when he started thinking of it as a joke, if only an inside joke with himself, Eddie found he could tolerate the name and even use it himself. It did, of course, help that Jack loved it and Eddie maybe-sorta-possibly thought it was – _God forbid he say it_ – cute for his little boy, and by his little boy he only meant that the kid was technically under his guardianship and was young and male. Of course.

The three-and-a-half-year old pouted. "Wha' 'bout Walty?"

Eddie sent his son a look. "Walter's busy, kid. Can't be here all the time."

Jack scrunched up his face. "Should be."

"But he ain't." Eddie ruffled the small boy's hair with something he would never admit was open affection before he shrugged on a large overcoat – he shuddered thinking that it was similar to that of Rorschach, a newer vigilante to the scene and a total sociopath – to cover his costume. He did so just in time to grab Jack from the path of the door, which swung open with a slam as his son's brother appeared.

Wade's face twisted into his ever-present, ever-annoying grin as Eddie sat Jack back on the floor, this time directly in front of his twelve-year old brother.

"It's just you and me tonight, JJ! This is gonna be _so cool_!"

Jack giggled loudly in delight.

Eddie groaned wearily. Wade said the same thing every time he babysat on his own – which was now, given Walter's new work schedule, almost every night. The routine got a bit stale after a while.

"'So cool,' right. You know the rules, kid. No answering the door for anyone, no answering the phone, keep all doors and windows locked, don't go outside, don't break anything, there's money for a pizza on the coffee table, don't touch the alcohol or my cigars – I know exactly how much is there, kid, so don't even try it – keep out of my room, you can watch TV, play videogames, whatever. Jack, all of my stuff, and yes, even you, must be completely intact when I get back. Got it?"

"Sir, yes, sir!" Wade saluted Eddie cheekily; the man was sorely inclined to flip him off, and just barely resisted, only because Jack was watching.

With a grumble Eddie turned to leave, only to have Wade call out, "Hey, Eddie?"

He groaned. "What, Wade?"

"If I can't open the door, then how do I get the pizza from the delivery guy?"

Eddie stared at the door in front of him. The temptation was so strong to just start beating his own head against it. But then Jack would get upset, and he would never hear the end of it. Ugh.

"Wade, only open it for the pizza guy. Lock the door when he's gone."

"Now see, you could've just said that, but no, you had to make me look like a feeb and ask."

"Didn't think you were so stupid I'd have to explain."

The almost-teen shot him an offended look, but before he could open his mouth to complain Eddie had already swept out of the door, his overcoat billowing slightly. "Bye Jack!" he called over his shoulder, not turning to look back or bothering to acknowledge Wade, just because he knew it would piss him off. Was pissing off a preteen a little pathetic? Yeah, but he didn't have anything better to do.

Eddie made his way to an ally, dumping his coat there in a somewhat-clean looking cardboard box and putting on his mask. With that he wandered off. Better go see what Metropolis was talking about with this "first meeting of the Crimebusters." It sounded like a load of bull, and he was going to have so much fun tearing apart their little pack of idealistic do-gooders. Who knew, maybe he'd get to check out the fresh meat while he was at it.

* * *

Wade picked up his brother and sat him on the couch, before plopping down next to him. "Ain't this great? Just the two of us. Man, this is gonna be so cool! We can stay up late – well, _I can, _Eddie'll have my hide if I let you, but you'll probably fall asleep anyways, so it doesn't matter."

Jack just watched his brother, a look of hero-worship adoration in his eyes. Wade, being Wade, thought this was awesome.

"Man, JJ, wish we could go out. Like, even going to the park would be nice. Yeah, you and me could go, and we could bring my friend Weasel – you'd love Weasel – and we could get Walter to come...Remind me to ask Eddie if we can do that sometime, m'kay?"

The toddler had no idea what his brother had said – he'd long ago learned to just nod happily when Wade started blathering – but he new it was something to be happy about, so he smiled widely anyway.

"Hey, wanna see what's on TV?" Wade turned it on without waiting for a response, not that he really expected one. JJ was completely content with listening.

"So, I dunno what Walter's been up to lately. I mean, I keep asking him, and all he says is that he's busy with his new job. Who knew that tailors work such weird hours? Not me, that's for sure. So then I asked him what kinda stuff he was tailoring, and he gave me that glare-y Walter look – you know the one, that 'I can't believe you're asking me that' look – and so I kept asking and then he flicked my forehead and then he walked away. I was gonna chase him but he'd just dropped me at my dad's place and you know how pissy my 'father' gets when I'm late. Well, when he notices I'm gone to begin with. And here I thought Canadians were supposed to be nice! Oh my God, Golden Girls marathon! There is a Lord!"

JJ watched his brother watch television with interest. He didn't know why Wade was always so excited about a bunch of old ladies. But if Bea Arthur made him happy, then Jack would be happy, too. With that, the pair settled in for a relatively (for them) quiet night.

* * *

A figure stood outside the apartment building staring up at one window in particular with unadulterated hate.

Edward Blake. So this was where the scumbag lived?

The man had tried to kill him – "tried" being the keyword. _Heh, yeah, like that's worked for everyone else._

He wasn't one that could be taken down easily. In fact, he could think of exactly one man in his experienced life that could ever beat him in a fight, and that man was not in any way Eddie Blake.

So Blake had got it in his head that he could just kill him? Sure, he'd already left the public eye. He was sick of the reporters, and after he had some sense literally kicked into him and realized what he'd been doing to-

He had just _had_ to leave. He couldn't stand New York anymore. Not that he liked cities much in the first place – once a country boy, always a country boy – but after realizing the ramifications of his actions he couldn't bare to be in that city anymore. Not when nothing ever got better there, no matter what they had done.

But Blake, tracking him down and having the nerve to try and kill him? After what he had done to a girl he supposedly loved, to have the gall to come after _him_? Well, that just wasn't going to work, now was it?

Blake was supposed to be off at some meeting, something about the "Crimebusters." For a split second he felt a terrible sense of remorse, just imagining _who_ was at that meeting with that piece of filth Blake, but he shook his head and growled loudly.

No, this wasn't a time for regret – it was a time for revenge. His brother may have been way out of line on many accounts, but he was right on this one: revenge really _does_ make you feel better.

* * *

"C'mon JJ, gotta get ya in your jammies before Bea's back on. Commercial breaks only last so long!"

Wade dug through the little boy's dresser and pulled out his Superman pajamas. He stared at them for a moment, mumbled, "Eh, I like Smallville better. 'Cept for that Lana chick, she pisses me off," and then tossed them at his little brother, who fumbled and dropped them.

The preteen turned to see his brother with his head inside his shirt, struggling to get one of his arms out. He quickly walked over and tugged the shirt over the little boy's head, replacing it swiftly with the pajama shirt. "C'mon, c'mon, Bea's almost back!"

"I can do it!" Jack protested, slapping his brother's hands away as he made the futile effort of fixing the shirt himself, tongue stuck sideways out of his mouth in concentration.

Wade had jumped on the idea. "Okay, how about you finish up and I'll be in there watching Bea?"

"Okay!" the toddler cheered, simply because he was at that stage where he believed he could do anything and everything by himself.

He watched his brother skip out of the room and then set to work fixing his shirt. When he was done, it was still a little twisted, but it was good enough for him.

Next came the pants. After getting off his current pair, he had tried putting on the pajama pants, only to trip and fall on his butt. Not one to be easily perturbed, he stood back up and started again, this time getting both legs in the same hole. Eyes narrowed, he restarted the process, finally getting one leg in each hole. He looked down at his handiwork with satisfaction, only to find that the tag from the pants was in the front and that he had put them on backwards. Groaning in frustration Jack tried again, this time succeeding. Smiling beatifically at his accomplishment, Jack gathered up his discarded clothes and took the armful to the hamper.

That was when he heard a sound at the window.

Jack took a few steps towards the window and peaked out. Seeing nothing but darkness and the streetlights, he wandered off to the bathroom. Wade had apparently forgotten this part of his nightly routine in his Bea-induced rush. He was lucky that, living with Eddie, Jack had learned to be at least a little independent. Though if he got toilet paper and toothpaste all over the bathroom, he wasn't the one who would be blamed.

When the small boy had finally finished in the bathroom, half a roll of toilet paper, part of a bar of soap, three hand-towels, most of a relatively new tube of toothpaste, a massive flood of water and surprisingly, a quarter of a bottle of shampoo later, he made his way back into his room, intent on grabbing his favorite blanket so he could curl up on the couch with it next to Wade.

That plan was working, up until the point where he walked into a giant pillar, sending him on his backside. Since when was there a column in his bedroom that he didn't know about?

JJ stared at the long, large dark line. Looking down, he saw that it ended in a boot, and glancing upward, he saw that it connected to a mountain of a man. Well, a man with a big sock on his head and a rope necklace. How silly of him!

Putting on his best smile, Jack beamed up at the imposing figure. "Hi!" he called up. Obviously, if the man was so tall, Jack would need to raise his voice for the man to hear him. See, he did learn things from Wade!

The figure blinked at him – well, it looked like he was blinking, it was hard to tell with the giant sock – and he leaned over a bit, closer to Jack. "Who-" he paused in thought, and then began again. "Who are you?"

The boy continued smiling, simply for lack of something better to do. "Jack!" he replied. "Wanna meet m' brother?"

The man stared in absolute and utter shock. What was this, this _child_ doing in _Blake's_ home? How the _hell_ had Blake gotten his filthy hands on a _kid_? The most disturbing thing of all was that the room the man found himself in was most definitely the child's room – the poor thing was _living_ with _Edward Blake_! The many implications of that statement horrified him.

Had the child been kidnapped? Perhaps Blake had stolen it from its proper family. But what would Blake want with a kid? Unless – no, that was too disturbing, even for Blake. And the little boy seemed to be perfectly fine. If Blake planned on trying anything, it hadn't happened yet. Maybe he wasn't going to hurt the kid – but then, nobody had thought he would really try to hurt Sally either, and look what had happened _there_...

"I'ma go get him." The boy stood and was about to leave the room when the man's hand clamped on his shoulder.

"How about you...don't?" How the hell did you ask a toddler not to give them up to their babysitter, especially after you had just broken into their bedroom intent on murdering the owner of the apartment upon his return?

"Okay!" With that, the boy plopped back down on the carpet and continued staring cherubically up at the masked man. "Who're you?"

The man paused for a long moment, unsure of what to say. Should he give the child the name of his alter-ego? It would be the easiest and the best choice when it came to keeping his cover. But what if the boy said that he had met _him_ of all people, someone who was supposed to be _dead_? Should this night not work out, then people would know he was around, and Blake would know he was around...

No, what reason did he have to be worried? This was a little kid. He couldn't be more than what, three, four? It wasn't like anyone would believe him.

So yes, he would just give him his codename. He would lie to a kid, but it wasn't lying because a lot of people only knew him by his codename, and he shouldn't feel bad about this, but damn it if something about the kid didn't feel familiar. But wait...if the kid hadn't equated him with his alter-ego by now, he might only know of him by name, if at all. So if he gave him the abbreviated form...

"My..._friends_ sometimes call me HJ."

"Cool! Wade calls me JJ."

The man, HJ, paused. "...Wade?"

"My brother. Wanna meet him?" The boy was halfway to the door before the man's mind caught up with him and he ran to grab the boy before he went and told his brother.

"No, no, no. How about you don't tell Wade that I'm here? In fact, why don't you go out there and stay with Wade, okay? But don't tell him about me."

"'Kay! What 'bout you?"

HJ paused. "I'll...stay here for the time being, until your father gets home. Eddie Blake _is_ your..._father_, right?"

"Yep!" Jack wandered off across his room, and came back with some stuffed lump and a book. He handed the lump, which had some sort of white fluff on the bottom that had to be a beard, to the huge man, as well as the book.

"Mr. Morton's favorite book," he supplied with a serious look in his eyes. HJ could only hope that Mr. Morton was the stuffed lump, because the idea of a grown man having his favorite book be _I Can't, Said the Ant_ would be really, terribly sad. Jack whispered conspiratorially, "Mr. Morton's a mole. He can't read, 'cept he don't know that. He likes pictures."

With a pat to the apparent mole's head, Jack walked out the door dragging a blanket behind him, leaving a stunned vigilante in his wake.

What the hell had he just gotten himself in to?

* * *

When Eddie came in the door to his apartment he found Wade and Jack curled on the couch together, both wrapped up in Jack's beloved Smurfs blanket. Shaking his head in amusement at the little strange images the world loved to create for him, Eddie came over to the couch and stared at the two for a moment. He contemplated trying to remove the remote control from Wade's grasp, but thought better of it as the boy pulled it farther into his iron grasp, muttering something about yellow boxes and stupid Skrulls that couldn't hope to copy him.

Sighing, the man took hold of the blanket and tugged it upwards so it covered the boys' shoulders, having to stand precariously on a pizza box to do so. Jack stirred softly, blue eyes opening blearily. He yawned widely and looked up at his guardian. With a tiny smile he said, "Hi Daddy."

"Hey JJ. Go back to sleep, you're gonna wake Wade up." That was a lie, considering that Wade slept like the dead, as Eddie had learned on previous occasions when the boy stayed overnight, but truthfully Eddie wasn't very good at these poignant little family moments. Or rather, he was...he was much too good at them for his own comfort.

"M'kay. Say night-night to HJ for me."

Eddie froze and could've sworn that someone had dumped a bucket of ice down his back, because the Comedian did _not_ shiver.

"_Who?_" he murmured in a strained voice, vocal chords failing on him for the first time in a long time.

Jack smiled beatifically at him, though his expression was intermitted by a heavy yawn. "HJ!"

Eddie was officially freaking out now. HJ? The only HJ that he knew – that _anyone _knew – had been ganked by Eddie himself more than a year ago. He couldn't fathom the man still being alive after all that he had done to him, and he had an especially hard time imagining that the man was in _his_ apartment, _his _home, talking to _his son_.

Swallowing the thick, scratchy wool sock that had suddenly appeared in his throat, Eddie asked, "Where is he?"

Jack placed his head on Wade's shoulder, nestling in closer to his older brother. "In m'room," he mumbled, slurring his words more than usual as exhaustion overtook him. "Was nice to me an' Morton. An' there's a sock on his head."

With that the boy fell into a peaceful sleep.

Eddie, on the other hand, was about to tear his much-loved hair out of his godforsaken head. That man was in his son's _room_? Okay, the universe was allowed to play its tricks, sure, but this, _this_ – this was _unacceptable_.

Steeling himself for a confrontation with a man who should have been dead, Eddie set his shoulder back, took a deep breath, and strode confidently towards Jack's bedroom, opening the door swiftly and closing it as soon as he'd entered. He didn't want the kids catching wind of whatever would go on here.

There, sitting on Jack's bed, was a man that should have been dead.

"What are you doing here?" Eddie growled, not even bothering to ask how the man was still alive.

The man stood, tall and imposing as ever. Jackass.

"Why, Eddie? Are you frightened? I didn't think that the great Comedian was afraid of _anything_."

"Stop with the banter, ya freak. What the blazing hell are you doing in my home? Better yet, in _here_?" He gestured at the area around him, trying to find a way to ask why the man was in his son's room without calling Jack his son. He couldn't afford to show weakness with anyone, especially not _him_.

"Oh, you didn't miss me? Eddie, I'm so hurt. I was hoping for a better reaction. I mean, you _did_ try to kill me."

"And I thought I'd succeeded. Still doesn't explain why you're _here._"

The voice was quiet and as sharp as any blade the Comedian had ever thought to carry. "Why do you think, _Comedian_? It wasn't just to say _hello_. Do you think I _enjoyed_ your little attempts at killing me? I'm fairly sure you can guess why I'm here."

Eddie growled. "Fine, come after me all you want; I don't care about that. But leave the kid outta this – he ain't done nothin' to ya."

If the man hadn't been wearing his hood, Eddie would have been able to see his raised brow. "Oh? You care for someone now? I didn't think you capable."

Blake shook his head, snarling. "Leave him _out_ of this! Whatever you want, keep it with me!"

The man scoffed. "Please. I, unlike you, would never touch a kid, no matter what those around them do. 'Sins of the father' and all that – yeah, I don't subscribe to it. Otherwise I'd have to go off myself."

Eddie felt his eyes narrow. "I don't hurt kids." _Unless they deserve it_, he added to himself. "So why're you here? Gonna kill me? If so, good luck finding someone to take the kid. I'm sure you'll have an awesome time finding his mother, and oh, once you meet her, she's just such a gem, I'm sure you'll feel awesome leaving him with her. Don't worry, she tries not to let her kids see her when she's prostituting herself, but if they see her doing the nasty she'll just beat the shit outta them and scar 'em for life. Don't worry, he'll be fine. I mean, his oldest brother is kind of emotionally distant and a little wacko in the head from it and the other's completely nuts, but I'm sure Jack'll be fine.

"And of course, if you have problems finding his 'mother' you could always dump him with the government. They've done wonders for his brother. You should see what a joy he is. I've heard that foster homes are _real_ nice. I mean, it's not like they're _all_ money-grubbing whores and alcoholics who're only in it for the monthly check. There're _some_ nice ones out there – just the chances of JJ getting into one are almost nil. But that's _fine_, as long as you get your revenge, right?"

The man was positively glaring at Eddie now, fury visibly in his eyes – which were the only thing one could see of him, but still, Eddie was proud to see him looking at least the slightest bit conflicted.

Finally, the man seemed to come to a conclusion as he settled a cold glare at he apartment's owner.

"I would love to kill you, never doubt that, Blake, but for the sake of the boy I won't. For some unknown reason he actually cares for you – I'm guessing it's some form of Stockholm syndrome – and you, in some twisted way, seem to care for him as well. As long as you continue taking care of him, I won't touch you. And if you don't..."

Eddie waved a hand nonchalantly, glad that his guilt-trip had succeeded. Sure, he didn't care what the universe did to him, but that didn't make him suicidal. "Yeah, yeah, you'll off me before I have the chance to move. So, now that we've cleared that up, how, exactly, did you survive?"

The man shook his head at Eddie's tactless subject-change. "I have my secrets, Blake, and you have yours."

"Says the man with a sock on his head."

"Excuse me?" Now he was rethinking his choice of peace for Jack's sake.

"Jack says you have a sock on your head, but that you were nice to him and Mr. Morton. Only reason why I haven't thrown you out a window yet."

The man cast a look at the stuffed lump left on the child's bed. "Mr. Morton...the Mole?"

"Yeah; Wade made him in some Home Ec. class. Didn't know the schools are turning _everyone_ into sissies now."

"...Uh-huh. If that's all, I'll be leaving. Remember Blake, one false step..."

"Oh cut the dramatics, you're as bad as your boyfriend. What, hit a sore-spot?"

The man snarled at him furiously with clenched fists. He said in a clipped, shaking tone, "Understand, Blake, that the only things standing between myself and your sorry ass are those children in the other room. Do not try my patience, or I might find that even my benevolent side just isn't enough to save you."

Eddie had to ask two more questions, though, before he allowed the man to leave. "How did Jack not recognize you? He knows the name of every idiot in spandex to ever enter New York."

Taken aback, the man could only say, "I don't know. He didn't seem to notice my costume, and I didn't give him my full name."

"Huh. I'm wondering if something's off with his vision; he doesn't recognize me as the Comedian, even after seeing me in costume. I even stood next to a picture of myself on the news once, and got nothing. Either he needs glasses or he is even more oblivious than Wade."

Not having anything to say to this, the man simply nodded, before turning to leave from the window through which he had come.

"Wait! Got another question."

He turned back, quirking another hidden eyebrow. "Yes?"

"Why were you so nice to him? I mean, it's obvious it's not just 'cause he's a kid."

The man paused, and then found this to be true. Sure, to most people the excuse that he was being nice to a child would seem kind and plausible, but the Comedian always did have finely-tuned skills of observance, as much as he hated to admit it. If anyone would notice odd behavior, hidden as it was, Edward Blake would.

He mulled over his response for a long moment, turning it around in his mind for a time before answering.

"He feels familiar. It's as if I should know who he is, and I'm just not realizing it – or whatever the answer is, my mind is rejecting it. But I have strong inclinations to leave him alone, surpassing that he's just a child."

Eddie nodded; the man paused and then nodded in turn, before opening the window and leaving with a "Goodbye Blake. Remember our discussion."

He just watched the man go, shaking his head in bemusement and no little amusement. Eddie walked over to Jack's bed and picked up the picture book and stuffed mole, placing both in their normal places on the small bookshelf in the corner of the boy's room before heading back to the living room, intent on standing guard even though he was exhausted. He wasn't placing his trust in anyone, especially not that man, no matter their promises.

As he walked off, he couldn't help saying it: "Yeah, see ya, _Hooded Justice_."

* * *

**A bit short for my stories, I know, but I really need to keep this scene on its own. You won't realize it now, but it's highly important for the future. There are a few references as to why and I'd love to hear your ideas on what exactly all of this means – tell me your guesses!**

**Just so you all understand, I have the utmost respect for people who foster children. But Eddie doesn't trust people, and following the stark looks at the darker sides of life that **_**Watchmen**_** likes to give us, I found it best to touch on some of the worst situations a child in foster care could experience without getting too sickening – and sadly, there are less-than-fantastic foster families whose only wish is for the government payment. To the actual foster families of the world, though, I salute you!**

**Mmm, by the way, for the Smallville thing – just know that, in my screwy timeline, Smallville hasn't even been thought-up yet. Mr. Morton is an actual mole I made for Mol Day; there's a picture of him on my deviantArt acount, and you can get to that from my profile - and yes, he looks like he has a beard, and no it wasn't intentional, and for the love of all that's holy, he is NOT a dry-erase board eraser, no matter what people in my chem class think! And as for _I Can't, Said the Ant_ - that was my sister's favorite picture book as a kid. I couldn't see the splendor of it, but hey, to each their own.**

**And to the rest of you: REVIEW!**


	4. Closure

**I was so excited to start this chapter that I pulled it out of my writing schedule special and then it gave me hell in the middle. And then the problem was that there was a lot I wanted to get done this chapter, a certain place I wanted to end up. I've decided that if I shoved it all in one chapter it would just take too long, so I've split this chapter in two, and we'll see the second half of Jack's lovely NYC trip next chapter in this time period. So in those two chapters we'll be getting some fun canon cameos, two this chapter and a big one the next time we visit this time zone.**

**And now, a note that all but the addressee can ignore:**

_**RAWHIDE WOLF! TURN BACK ON YOUR PRIVATE MESSAGE FUNCTION!**_** I don't know what compelled you to turn it off, but you've messaged me and every time I go to respond I'm told that you've disabled the private message function. I would've thought I was in trouble or something until you messaged me again. I only can get to you through this site and you had nothing for me to review, so as I knew you read this story this was my best bet. So please, TURN BACK ON YOUR PRIVATE MESSAGING! ~ Yours kindly, Carlough ;D**

**And on a happier note: I've gots fan art! Check it out people, the lovely **_**Cyberbutterfly**_** made this! http : / cyberbutterfly . deviantart . com /#/d39q73h Remove the spaces and check it out or see the link on my profile, but it's an awesome movie-style poster for this story! Bow to the wonder that is **_**Cyberbutterfly!**_

_**adw**_**: Thanks so much for reviewing!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men, Deadpool or Watchmen or any of their characters – they belong to their respective owners. But I do own a lot of Deadpool comics, so I can own him on the inside…**

* * *

"You're going."

"Am not. You can't make me!"

"I can, I will, and I am."

"Dang it, you are not! I told you I am not going and that is final, so you can just-"

Jack froze in his tirade when Logan grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and held him aloft, so their eyes were level. He chose to stare at a lazily waving pink line coming from a nearby bird instead of looking his mentor-of-a-sort in the eyes. It didn't work, because Logan just gave him a little shake, saying, "Look at me, runt. I know when you're not; you're a horrible actor."

With an exasperated but defiant feeling, Jack glanced towards the other's face through the dark lenses of his glasses, glaring at once again being called a runt. "Fine, I'm looking. You're gorgeous. What d'ya want?"

Logan gave him a half-hearted glare and rolled his eyes briefly. "You know already, you're just stalling because you're wimping out."

The teen crossed his arms in front of himself, pouting. "I am _not_ wimping out, I am choosing to ignore a situation that I wasn't even involved in while it was occurring and really, nobody else will tell me about it and it happened _years_ ago and they've probably forgotten-"

He found himself being shaken again, this time to shut him up. Logan stared at him until he met his eyes again.

"You _were_ involved, even if you weren't there. You can't lose your only remaining family and _not _be involved. And I'm sure that they'll remember hearing all about your brother when he was arrested."

Jack's eyes narrowed and he glared at the ground. "Yeah, of course."

Logan rolled his eyes again, and finally put Jack down, though the teen was sure it wasn't because his arm was getting sore. "C'mon," he said, lightly shoving Jack from behind in the direction of the city. Of course, being Logan, a light shove was enough to make any non-physically-enhanced person stumble, but Logan seemed to be ignoring that fact, choosing to simply snort at Jack as his arms pinwheeled in an attempt to stay standing.

After a few hours of walking (because Jack refused to go into the city riding bitch on "Logan's" bike) the pair finally made it into the first location on Jack's long-overdue to-do list. Jack stared at the cemetery for a moment before turning around.

"I can't do it," he said quickly with wide eyes. "I can't, I just can't."

Logan sighed, but his eyes softened. "Yes you can. I'll be with you; you'll be fine."

"I…" Jack trailed off into silence, chewing his lip fitfully. The idea of finally facing one of the things he had been trying to ignore, to escape for years now terrified him.

"Come on, kiddo." Logan clapped a hand on his shoulder and gently steered him through the wrought-iron gates. Eyes wide and picking at a hangnail on his thumb with the index finger of the same hand, a nervous habit of his, Jack let himself be ushered into the cemetery.

"How about we check out Mason's first? Sound better?"

Numbly, Jack nodded in response. The Nite Owl had been one of his favorites, and he had owned a copy of _Under the Hood_. He had never understood why his father and brother had hated it so much; he should have realized.

After asking a caretaker for directions, the pair made their way to the final resting place of Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl. Jack stared at the headstone for a long moment, mind going blank.

"Wow," he finally muttered. "Just…wow."

"What?" grunted Logan, crossing his arms and staring around the cemetery, always on the watch for possible threats.

_Yeah_, Jack thought, _because that old man over there grieving for his wife is _such_ a threat_. He scoffed and had to close his eyes for a moment, because the man's sobbing was leaving long, wavering blue lines across his vision, and he was feeling exceptionally sad already and didn't need any help.

The dark-haired teen jammed his hands in his pockets again for lack of something to do with them other than picking all remaining skin cells off of his thumb.

"It's so…simple. I mean, I know Mason didn't want to live a fancy life and he wasn't looking for fame from his run as the Nite Owl or his book, but just…he was so great, you know? And to be commemorated by just a plain grey slab of stone, nothing more than a name and a date and a 'he will be missed,' it's…sad. Sadder than remembering the fact that such a great guy is gone, I think, because years from now, someone's gonna look at this and see just another headstone. They're not gonna realize how great this guy was, all the work he did to keep the city safe. They're just gonna see another slab of stone, and it's just…not right. He deserves to be remembered better than this."

Logan was silent for a moment before replying. "Maybe he just didn't want to be remembered for being the Nite Owl. He may have just been sick of the fame and the controversy of being a vigilante, even a retired one, and just wanted to be Hollis Mason, old man who owned an auto-shop and lived a relatively obscure life."

Jack cast a narrow-eyed glare at the ground, damp from recent rain. "Obscure old men who owned auto-shops aren't murdered for no reason."

The other had nothing to say to that, nothing he _could_ say to that, so he remained silent and instead turned around, wandering a few yards away to give Jack some privacy.

Once Logan was far enough away for his liking (he knew it was all for show, because Logan could hear him from the other side of the cemetery), Jack sat on the wet grass, not caring if the damp chill seeped into his legs. He almost enjoyed it; it kept him grounded, reminded him of where he was.

"So," he began. He brushed invisible lint off of his pants as he tried to think of something to say. "So, uh, you never met me. Well, if you can even see me right now, you'd know that. You'd also probably be a bit pissed that some strange kid you don't know is sitting on you. Oh crud, that didn't sound right. I'm sorry. I just hope you're as benevolent as I always imagined you'd be, and that you won't be upset with me for this. Alright, here goes.

"My name's Jack Blake. Yeah, Blake; the Comedian was my, ah, adoptive father, technically. Well, technically he was my father, 'cause that's what my birth certificate says, but we all knew that he wasn't. But that's not what I'm here about.

"I wanted to apologize. You know, for your death. I know I'm not really connected but…those guys, the police reports said that they killed you 'cause the new Nite Owl and Silk Spectre broke Walter, er, Rorschach outta prison. Walter was my, ah, half-brother, and I know he didn't like you – I'm sorry, I shouldn't be saying that, but it's kinda true. He didn't really like you 'cause of your book and all, and he may've said he hated you, but deep down I don't think he'd want you to die 'cause of that. 'Specially 'cause you weren't even involved in the jailbreak. You were innocent. You…you didn't deserve that.

"So, ah, that's all I gotta say; kinda pleading for you to forgive my brother for being a jerk, 'cause he didn't mean it – at least, not totally. He was, uh, kinda hard to understand. You had to be close to get him, and even then I think I musta barely knew him… Anyways, I'm sorry for what happened. You didn't deserve that, and you were a seriously amazing guy. I loved your work; you were one of my childhood heroes, and you still are. And you shouldn't have had to go out like that, and I'm sorry you did. Thanks for all you did, though. Gave me hope. You were one of the few that was able to keep up the noble image over the years, made me realize that they don't all have to be corrupted in the end. So thanks for that…ah, I guess that's all, so, uh, goodbye."

He stood and brushed off his pants, pausing to stare for a long moment at the grave, devoid of flowers or candles, of any personal decorations that showed that someone cared. Suddenly Jack felt intensely guilty for not having thought to bring anything. Without any other ideas, he knelt back down and plucked out the few weeds that had grown around the plot, wrapping the plants around his fingers and then pulling, just for the sake of something to do.

Logan, sensing that Jack was done, strode back over. "You ready?" he asked redundantly. He nodded his head farther into the cemetery. "Caretaker told me where he is."

Jack paused for a moment, trying to gather his courage. A gust of wind blew at his back, moving in the direction Logan had just indicated. Feeling slightly braver, he nodded.

"As I'll ever be. Let's go."

The pair wandered off towards their new destination, and as if by fate, Jack stopped as he noticed something – well, actually, it was either fate or the fact that he had a tendency to stare at his feet while he walked to keep his footing. But either way, he froze when he read the words.

"Logan, could you hold up for a sec? Just found another I wanna talk to."

The elder of the two raised an eyebrow, but seeing the expression on Jack's face, visible even with his sunglasses on, he simply nodded and wandered off again.

Jack crouched down by the grave, cocking his head to the side as he took in yet another bare-bones description. A name, a date, that was all. He frowned; nobody deserved that sort of remembrance, even a criminal.

"Hey. You didn't know me either – wow, saying a lot of that today – but, ah, I need to apologize to you, too, on behalf of my brother. The, um, police reports say that he killed you. I don't know if that's true – I mean, I don't _want_ it to be true, obviously, but apparently I didn't know him as well as I'd thought and you, uh, wouldn't have been the first that he'd killed.

"But anyways, I wanted to apologize for my brother, ahem, killing you. Rorschach, I mean. Walter. He was my brother. I don't know why he did it, or if he even did it. I don't know if you had done something to deserve it or not, though at your age I can't imagine that you did. And the report said that, ah, you were sick already, so anyone killing you was kinda, erm, overkill, pardon the pun. So I'm sorry that he killed you. I know it doesn't make up for being dead, of course, but, well, I thought someone should say it. You may've been a criminal, but, well, you weren't evil. I know you weren't.

"So that's it. I'm apologizing on my brother's behalf, and uh, as a side note, I'm also apologizing for the Comedian's behavior toward you. I mean, I know he was the vigilante to your criminal, but he wasn't an all-bad guy if you got to know him. Though I'm not sure you woulda been able to tell… Anyways, that's all. So, uh…bye."

Again he took a rudimentary swipe at the accumulated weeds that the caretaker wouldn't have bothered with, and he added them to his growing collection that he wringed in his hands anxiously, leaving them stained green.

"Who was he?" Logan asked as he approached, nodding at the headstone. Jack tenses for a moment before sighing.

"Edgar Jacobi. Moloch the Mystic. He was an ongoing enemy of the Minutemen, was like an arch-nemesis to the Comedian."

"And?" prompted Logan. He knew that couldn't be the only reason that Jack would bother with the man. Sure, the kid was a bit too soft on some subjects, especially those pertaining to his past, but he wouldn't stop to "talk" unless he had a good reason.

"And Rorschach allegedly murdered him."

"…Oh." And there was his good reason: Jack's guilty conscience for every wrong his brother and father had ever committed. He had to say, the kid had a problem with that. No wonder he used to have constant sessions with Chuck.

Jack shoved his hands in his pockets, a surefire sign that he was uncomfortable, especially considering that he completely disregarded the wads of slowly dying plant-life he still held in his hands. "Can we just go?" he muttered quickly and a bit irritably. Logan simply chose to pick his battles and nodded his head, steering his charge off towards their final destination, their true reason for coming here.

The headstone was simple, like the others had been. Nothing extravagant for these men, it seemed, or even anything to set their own resting places apart from others' aside from their personal information upon the slabs of stone.

Logan wouldn't have been able to pick it out of the hundreds of others in the cemetery. Graves meant nothing to him. He didn't know if there was someone in his past that had died who he had cared about; he had no bad memories of graveyards, and actually, neither did Jack. And thus, he himself felt no tug of emotion, no inkling of sadness as he viewed the marker of the final resting place of a man he had never known.

But just the sight of the name carved into the stone brought the dark-haired teen to his knees. With a shuddering sob Jack ripped his sunglasses from his face and jammed them in a pocket, using his other hand to fiercely scrub at the tears that had suddenly sprung from his vivid blue eyes.

This was another moment that reminded Logan of how essentially socially retarded he was. Sure, he had let Rogue hitch-hike with him, but he had also been a total asshole about it, almost completely ignoring her the whole time. In fact, most of their conversations even now mainly consisted of her beaming at him and talking while he grunted in response and nursed a beer. But then again, he actually _liked_ Rogue and that was how he treated her.

People got a hell of a lot less from him, and not only because he was gruff and just didn't care, but because when he got in situations that required some knowledge of social etiquette and sympathy, he was lost. Logan wasn't sure if this was just an effect of having no past to base his actions and responses off of, as if he had somehow lost a lesson in empathy that every person unconsciously learned while growing up, or if he had just always been so stoic and standoffish. He was leaning towards the latter.

In the long run this left him staring at the kid he had unofficially taken under his wing while he sobbed his heart out over his adoptive father.

That was another thing Logan didn't quite get: family. He obviously had no idea of what his had been like, or if he had ever even had one, but he suspected that his had not been the best, because that simple word, the sheer idea of it left him with a sneer on his face and a bad taste in his mouth. Whoever, wherever and whenever his family was, he most certainly had issues with them and had probably been long-estranged from them.

Maybe that was why nobody had come looking for him.

Logan had no knowledge of his family, so he had to make one of his own. But Logan didn't exactly _play nice_, making it kind of hard for him to even assemble a makeshift family. People always complained that you can't choose your family so you had to deal with them, even if you couldn't stand them. Well, Logan had the opportunity to choose his family, so he had decided he would really rather not fill it with people he disliked.

That had cut his list of potentials down considerably.

The professor was like some great-uncle or something, not quite grandfatherly but still wise nonetheless. Storm was a sister, and Rogue was a niece, despite her ever-obvious crush. Some of her friends, like the Popsicle or Kitty, they also constituted as nephews and nieces. Scott – well, he wasn't sure on Scott. He could never decide if he hated or liked the man; they held grudging respect for each other, and the two occasionally got along until they remembered that they were supposed to hate each other. Scott could be that cousin who visits sometimes who you don't quite like but isn't around long enough to form a proper opinion on. And Jean…for the life of him, Logan couldn't place how he felt about her. Cousin, sister, something more? He could never tell – that depended more on her current mood than his own emotions.

And that left Jack, his sidekick of the last few months with his sarcastic wise-cracking ways and his shifty answers upon questions into his past that he deemed too prying and his big smiles and expressive eyes and his heart that he wore on his sleeve. Jack was some cross between a nephew, a son and a little brother. That was the only way Logan could describe it. The kid was just, he was just Jack, he was there, and at least at the moment he was the biggest member of Logan's unofficial family-that-wasn't.

But even if Logan could give familial roles out to the people in his life he couldn't relate to Jack's sorrow over losing a father. Logan had no father-figure that he recollected, had never met anyone since losing his memory who fit the role (or what he believed from observing others to be the role) so he couldn't truly understand Jack's pain, especially because he had never in his memory lost somebody he considered to be important to him.

And yet something told him that Eddie Blake hadn't been a traditional father, maybe making him easier to comprehend to a stranger. It was hard to feel sadness for the loss of someone you hadn't known or understood, and from what he had gleaned from obscure comments Jack would make about his past (the _only_ kind of comments he would make on the subject) he had come to understand that Eddie Blake was a complex enigma, even to his own adopted son. All Jack would say was that upon Eddie's death he had learned that he didn't know the man at all. But it seemed that even with so many secrets, so many things about the man that puzzled Jack, he could still properly mourn him.

So maybe that meant that Logan could too. Maybe he could at least try to feel sorry that Jack was sad, even if he couldn't relate. And maybe he could just try to be there, to listen and try to learn and appreciate all of those little annoying intricacies attached to the communications involving losing family. And maybe he could try to retain his dignity and still be a man by the end of the ordeal.

"It's hard to think that he's really gone," Jack choked. Logan jerked at the unexpected speech; he had been planning to move off to a respectful distance, as he had been, but Jack was looking up at him with those teary blue eyes that probably couldn't even see him and was obviously speaking to him, and not the grave. For his part, Logan could only nod.

Jack seemed to understand this and didn't seem to mind. He patted the ground next to him and gave Logan an imploring look. A disturbed look of discomfort crossed Logan's face and he was glad that Jack probably couldn't make out his expression right now, even though the cemetery was quiet. If anything, his tears obscured his view. At the large, sad, begging expression, Logan couldn't help a groan as he gave in and sat down on the ground next to Jack, mirroring his position and crossing his legs while he scowled for all he was worth at Jack.

His scowl lost some of its power when Jack simply gave him a watery half-smile. "Thanks," he murmured. Logan stared at him, baffled by the gratitude for something he didn't really understand and tried to think up a reply, but didn't have to, as Jack continued speaking.

"He…he was the Comedian. I know you know that, but it doesn't say it here, and he wouldn't want it to, but it should…he was more than just 'Edward Morgan Blake,' he was a _person_, not just some name on a piece of rock in a freakin' cemetery! He was a person…he shouldn't be remembered like this, he was _more _than just _this_."

Jack was digressing now, working himself into a rut created by his own building anxiety and sadness over facing the death of his father. He had stuck on one thing, one insignificant little thing that shouldn't have bothered him and was now freaking out over it. Logan decided to bring him back to reality.

"You're really just here to tell me you don't like the headstone?"

His charge shot him a glare and then paused, and then to Logan's amazement, he let out a hoarse bark of laughter, bringing up a hand to swipe at his unstaunched tears. "Oh God, I needed that. It sounds like something Eddie would have said. He hated all this, this mushy crap; he'd hate that I was working myself up over him. But I can't help but feel that people should _know_, but then, he wouldn't have wanted that. It's not who he was."

Logan paused, mulling over his words, and then spoke. "Then who was he?"

Jack cocked his head towards him, that watery smile back on his face in earnest. To Logan's contentment, he had a bit of his normal glimmer back in those effervescent eyes of his.

"He was Eddie. He was the Comedian. He had the most twisted sense of humor you could ever imagine, more so than me or Wade or anyone I've ever met. The world wasn't his oyster, it was just one big punch-line; life was a joke, and the Comedian was there to show you the comedy of it, one dead criminal at a time. He was morbid and sarcastic and kind of, no _definitely_ a jackass and I wouldn'ta had him any other way. He was…" he paused, choked up for a moment. "He was my dad, y'know? He raised me, he took care o' me, and I loved 'im, and God-dangit I miss 'im so friggin' much!"

Logan didn't fail to notice that as Jack delivered his monologue his grammar started to fail on him and half-words were being spoken. With a start he realized that this was due to the sobs that he was still trying to stifle, even with a big, heartfelt smile on his face.

"Y'know," said Jack in a more conversational tone. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, still sniffling a bit. "He used to parade around the apartment in his Comedian costume and I never realized it. I mean, I knew exactly who the Comedian was and could recite vigilantes to you by rote, but it never occurred to me that the Comedian and my own father could be one and the same. Part of it was my, ahem, sight problem just beginning, but the majority of it was me thinking he was just a big Comedian fan and had pajamas to prove it." When Logan raised an eyebrow at him Jack scowled. "Don't give me that look! I was a little kid and I had Superman pajamas, so I thought, 'Hey, why can't Dad have superhero pajamas too?'"

He snickered to himself quietly. "God, I was such a dork. Wade used to tell me all the time, not that he was much better. Wade was…he was Wade. He was something else, alright. Had the Comedian's sense of 'humor' but a bit more morbid, and _definitely_ more random. He loved the weirdest things, everything from Bea Arthur to enchiladas, but not chimichangas, he just liked to say the word.

"When we were kids – well, when _I _was a kid and he was in middle school, he used to parade around talking about how he was going to be just as great as all of those vigilantes. He had it all worked out. His buddy Weasel was going to be his sidekick who did all the dirty work and he was going to be the star of the show, kicking ass and taking names. The counselors thought he was nuts; they said he was sociopathic, psychotic, a tad bit narcissistic with an over-inflated ego, schizophrenic, and had dissociative identity disorder to boot. That's multiple personalities, FYI. I don't think he really had DID; a lot of people in our family talked to themselves. I mean, I have conversations with myself all the time. Might not be healthy, but we're not usually certifiable in that aspect. I think the counselors just got confused 'cause they heard him talking 'bout his future-self, y'know, all the stuff he'd do when he was grown up."

"'His future-self?'" Logan quoted with a furrowed brow.

"Yeah. He really weirded 'em out, 'cause he had his alias all picked out and everything, even though Weasel told him that was a bad idea 'cause they could track him later for it."

"And what was that alias?" Logan doubted it would mean anything – Wade wasn't a mutant, he had wanted to model himself after vigilantes, all of whom had been simply human, Manhattan aside.

"Heh, he called himself Deadpool. Play on Deathstroke."

Logan didn't understand the second part of that statement, because he was too busy shuddering at that name. He didn't know why, but he _knew_ that name. It gave him the same sickening shudders as the name Sabertooth. It was the same preternatural feeling that he had received upon seeing the "Sabertooth" fighting for Magneto, the one that had told him that this was an imposter, though he had never before met a man using that name. Chuck thought those shudders, those feelings meant he was experiencing something from his past through one of his senses. He was remembering.

He fingered his dog tags. Wilson had been in some sort of military, Jack had mentioned once. He remembered a comment about something to do with working for the Canadian government, from what little Jack had learned from the declassified sections of his brother's file years ago. Logan knew he must have been in some sort of military to have official dog tags. But the name on them, Wolverine – a codename. It was only ever codenames that gave him those weird feelings. Could they have been…? Could those names have been on other dog tags? Had he known the "real" Sabertooth?

Had he known Jack's brother?

"Hn." Past a grunt, Logan couldn't really think up anything to say.

Jack didn't seem to notice, or if he did, he didn't care.

"And then there was Walter. Walter was…distant, definitely. Physically, socially, and my Lord most definitely emotionally. Doctors said later that he had anti-social personality disorder and a huge case of sociopathy, but I never noticed, even though it had to be admitted some signs were there. He barely spoke, and when he gave non-committal grunts and one word answers. He only used sentences if absolutely necessary to get across a point, and even then they were all fragments. Drove people crazy like that. Nobody believed he was related to me or Wade. I could never figure why; probably 'cause he was a redhead and me and Wade had dark hair. Well, Wade's wasn't that dark, it was brown, but, y'know what I mean, neither of us was close to bein' a ginger.

"Walter, well, you know what happened to him. Turned out to be Rorschach, got arrested, got broken out, disappeared. Y'know, I don't even know if he's actually dead. I mean, I kinda guessed he was, 'cause he never contacted me or anything, and he knew that Eddie was gone…I guess I kinda just hoped that he would come find me or something if he was alive. I know I shouldn't hope that he would break cover just for me, but I wish he would've. And that's if he's still alive. And my God, I'm a terrible person 'cause I almost hope he _is_ dead 'cause then I could excuse it to myself for him abandoning me. I am such a piece of shit."

Logan didn't really have an answer to that. He wanted to tell Jack that he wasn't, that he was justified…but he just wasn't sure. He didn't know how to relate to something like this. It was times like this that he particularly hated not having a past to remember, to look back on and use to help in the present. Because now one of the few people he actually cared about was hurting, and all he could do was sit there and nod like a complete tool.

But luckily for him Jack didn't seem to be looking for an objection. In fact, he didn't even seem to remember that Logan was there at all. He was just talking, venting aloud to an emotionally stunted amnesiac and the grave of his long-dead pseudo-father. And somehow, in some way, Logan realized that this was actually helping Jack. He was crying – shit, at some points he was flat out sobbing – and he was morose, and yet he was laughing and smiling and reminiscing and God help him, Logan had just learned the power of a chick flick moment and a good cry, and he did not like it, not one bit. Did that mean that if he ever had emotional turmoil he had to cry about it? If that was the case, he would stick with bottling it all up, thank you kindly. No siree, no emotion-sharing for him.

While Logan was adamantly assuring himself that he would never be on Jack's end of the current sob-fest, Jack himself had turned to the tombstone of his dead father. He talked to Eddie in a quiet mutter about what had happened to him since his death, even though he liked to think that Eddie was watching him from above – or in Eddie's case, maybe down below – and already knew what had happened.

He talked about finding out about Eddie's death and Walter's "escapades" in the newspaper of all things. He talked about discovering his own mutation, about his months on the street, about the one who had taken him under their wing in that time. He spoke of his time at Xavier's, his old friend St. John, and he talked about leaving due to an all-encompassing fear that he was following in his brothers' well-worn, beaten, battered and _deadly_ footsteps. And he talked about meeting Logan, how the pair had been traveling together and how Logan was making him face his past, and that included coming to see Eddie.

Jack apologized to Eddie for taking so long to come see him, and for having a little cry-fest on his grave. He knew it was the sort of thing his dad would have hated; it was much too sentimental for him, especially when all the time people were dying – good people, people better than Eddie who didn't spend their days drinking and killing and instead lived under the cheerful guise that the world was happy and they could make it even better.

Eddie had always hated people like that, and yet, he worked to protect them. Once after a few too many shots of whiskey when Jack was eight, he had admitted to him that while he knew there was no hope for him, maybe if those people were happy enough and blinded enough to the horrors of the world, maybe if they were cheery enough and truly believed that the world could be a good place, then maybe, just maybe, it could. Of course, the Comedian would never say that sober and he either forgot that he had ever said it or had hoped Jack wouldn't remember it afterwards.

He would have been horribly embarrassed to know that his drunken statement was what inspired Jack to want to become a vigilante, especially after he had worked so hard to openly mock everything vigilantes did in a vain effort to turn him away from the idea; he hadn't wanted his kid going down the same dark road that he had, not that Jack would have realized it because he had never known the truth about Eddie's identity until his death, no matter how many times the funny pajamas came out. Loathe was Eddie to say it, but the kid was just like one of those cheery people, too happy with the world in an innocent way that he found made him want to protect the kid instead of writing him off as naïve. Of course, he had known Jack since he was a toddler and had to admit that all kids were generally naïve, but still, he wanted to subtly tear apart his dreams of saving the world until they were nothing but forgotten trash on the ground. See, he did care! Anyone else and he would have just given them a sneering rant about how they were too pathetic and weak to be a vigilante, but Jack, he gave some finesse in his speeches.

And yet while attempting to tear apart Jack's dreams without his notice he ended up only encouraging him into the same future that had already shredded their little unconventional family. Oh the irony, that trying to save others and fix their problems could create you so many of your own. You try to clean up the streets and make life better for others while your own went down the crapper, and it always did. No vigilante got a purely happy ending, anyone could tell that. Eddie hadn't wanted that future for Jack and had tried to steer him from it, only to send him hurdling right into the center of it. It was a good thing he was dead then, because otherwise he would have been _pissed_.

So Jack finished his lament to a slab of stone and apologized profusely and when he stood, he felt lighter than he had in four and a half years. Carrying around guilt and denial for that long could be pretty stressful.

Logan was vaguely surprised when Jack stood, and then guilty when he realized that it was because he had finished his one-sided conversation and Logan hadn't even been paying attention. Once again he thanked whatever deity was out there that Jack didn't seem to care. He simply scrubbed his face with the cuff of an orange sweatshirt sticking out from under his jacket and gave a long look at the grave of Edward Blake before smiling at Logan.

"Well, let's get this show on the road! C'mon, we got a prison to visit."

Stop number two on Jack's list was the prison where Walter had spent a brief stay. All of Eddie's belongings had been stored away upon his death by his lawyer, the contents of his apartment set aside for a day when Jack could go through them all. Walter hadn't had any belongings of interest, or at least none had been found in that disturbingly grotesque apartment that he had been renting. The landlady, some middle-aged woman with a gaggle of kids (_whore,_ growled a voice inside Jack that he liked to ignore because it sounded more like Walter than was comfortable) had said he barely spent any time there anyway; she failed to comment on the fact that the disgusting furniture came _with_ the excuse for an apartment.

But in the end, that had left Jack with exactly nothing to remember his brother by but the prison photos that had been released to the press. He knew that Walter had to have come in with something, and the prison might still have it around in a box somewhere, and thus, that was where he was headed. Jack wanted to make his peace with New York City so that maybe he could get all of his business done and then be able to ignore it for the rest of his life. He disliked this city more than just for what happened to Eddie and Walter that one fateful October.

Speaking of the dreaded month, he laughed now thinking that he had met Logan in the month he hated the most of all. Eddie would say that the world just liked to mess with him, but Jack thought maybe the planet was trying to give him a consolation prize for all the crap it had tossed at him all at once, because here he was now in March and things had only been looking up since he met Logan. He could only hope that they would continue in that direction, because he wasn't sure he could take another blow.

The trip to the prison was windy and unmemorable, as was entering the actual building. Trust Jack's luck, the interesting stuff started when he tried to talk about picking up his brother's belongings with the petite redhead woman behind the front desk. Ugh, give him another redheaded female, that's just what he needed. He already had a dislike for most women in general, which spawned from what the other disliked redhead had described as "a fear of the female gender due to an abusive mother which then manifests itself as intense hatred and anger to protect the terrified bearer."

Or something like that. But he wasn't scared…it was just that most women unnerved him and really, really pissed him off. The only one who didn't was Ms. Munroe, and that had only been because she had waited him out long enough that he finally came around to getting to know her, and she was so calm nothing about her could really upset him. Plus her power was freaking cool.

But trust him to be right about having bad feelings around women with red hair, because after making him spend half an hour just proving that he was in fact the younger half-brother of Walter Kovacs and the only known surviving relative (and oh, he had a fun time trying to say that Logan was his legal guardian, because of _course_ the government wouldn't let him take Walter's stuff without a goddamned _guardian_). Of course, the only-known-surviving-relative thing turned out to be a real trip, because apparently a few years back some guy came in, claimed to be Walter's cousin and picked up all of his things. And of course, being that he was an adult and had some form of proof that Jack couldn't begin to guess (and of course the redhead wasn't disclosing it), the woman decided that Jack seemed more like some kid who wanted to play with the belongings of a famous criminal they idolized.

To say that Jack was pissed would be an understatement. Walter grew up mostly in foster care, and if their "mother" had any family left they wouldn't own her or any of her bastard children. So who the hell had his brother's stuff? Was it some fanatic, some pawnshop owner or crime nut or what?

Luckily for Jack he had Logan, whom he was fairly sure the receptionist thought was some stranger he had picked up on the street to pose as his guardian. Huh, not too far from the truth. But a stranger wouldn't have been able to wrangle information from her.

As Logan specialized in intimidating women while apparently turning them on at the same time (the very idea horrified Jack, who thanks to his dislike of females in general had never gotten past that "girls-are-gross-they-have-cooties" stage of life), he was able to, with a few long stares and noncommittal grunts, gain access to information that Jack never would have been given: the recorded name and address of the man who had taken Walter's things.

That was what placed Jack and Logan on the doorstep of one Sam Hollis.

When the owner of said home came to the door, Jack had to pause for a moment not just to clear his sight, but to then confirm to himself that yes, this was a slightly pudgy mustached blond man. How the _hell_ had anyone thought that this guy was related to his short, wiry, somewhat weasely and emaciated redheaded brother?

"Ah, can I help you?" the man asked, bringing up a hand to rub the back of his head in a nervous gesture. He addressed Logan while speaking, watching him warily, and while Jack enjoyed that his companion could placed fear in the hearts of civilians he hated that he was just passed right over. Logan, knowing Jack fairly well by now, sensed this and ran with it.

"It's him you're lookin' for, bub," he said with crossed arms, nodding with his chin at Jack. The man gave the teen a cursory glance and couldn't help raising an eyebrow briefly. At the fierce scowl on the boy's face plainly visible even with the large thick sunglasses, both eyebrows flew up in surprise.

"Oh," the man muttered, shaking his head a bit in confusion before conjuring up a placating smile for the teen. "So how can I help you?"

"You Sam Hollis?"

"Yes, yes I am." The man let the sentence hang, the "what do you want" hovering in the atmosphere like one of the lines obscuring Jack's vision.

"You have my brother's stuff."

The man looked sincerely taken aback. "Excuse me? I don't believe I'd have anybody's things, at least not without their permission."

Logan had to grunt in agreement at that. From what he could see the guy's house was covered in owl-themed memorabilia. Nobody would want that back if it was stolen.

Jack, however was nonplussed, and began to glare, though the full effect was lost with the glasses. "My brother, Walter Kovacs. You went to the prison and got his stuff, it's in the records. I want it back."

Now the man looked gobsmacked, and a bit terrified before he swallowed visibly and forced his features to smooth out. "I, ah, think you'd better come in."

"I think we'd better," Logan returned, enjoying how the man gulped once more at his feral smile.

The pair was led into the building. Logan didn't fail to notice how Hollis leaned his head out the door and surveyed the street for a moment before quickly shutting the door. When he turned to face the duo, though, he had a friendly, if anxious smile on.

"Honey? I think you need to come here," he called up a set of stairs just inside the building.

"What's wrong?" a woman asked, making her way down the stairs. Jack almost flinched upon seeing her. Bright yellow-blond hair like her husband, the same brown eyes – Lord were they twins?

But no, it was more her mole that threw him off. Considering her face and its placement most males would find it at least not a deal breaker, if not in some way cute or attractive. Jack, however, was too busy trying to shake himself from flashbacks to his mother. He hated moles, but he hated women with moles more.

The man rubbed the back of his head again. Jack, fed up with waiting and losing his patience, wasn't finding this as amusing anymore; if anything, he was getting exasperated.

"These two are here about Walter Kovacs." As he said this, the woman's face closed off completely, all traces of her bemused smile gone.

"What about him?" she asked in a carefully neutral tone that left nothing to the imagination on her feelings about the subject.

"Supposedly, this, er, young man here is his brother, and he wants his belongings from the prison."

The woman started and then scoffed. "Brother? _Him_ with a _family_?"

Jack felt the need to defend his brother to this woman who for some reason really, really pissed him off just with her presence. (_Whore!_ seethed his inner-Walter voice.)

"Yeah, he had a family! Everyone's born with one, y'know! Just 'cause our mom didn't want any of us doesn't automatically mean that he didn't have a family."

"Whoa, calm down now," Sam Hollis tried to placate. "What my wife Sandra here meant was that we were just surprised that he would have any relatives. He never mentioned anybody, though he was always quiet and secretive, I shouldn't be so surprised. But…he just didn't seem the type. I mean, even if he had a family I didn't think he'd be the type to stay in contact."

He looked hopelessly at Logan for help; Logan just shook his head grimly, signifying that he was just the chaperone and chauffer. This was Jack's deal.

"You knew him personally?" Jack asked with a raised brow. As far as he knew Walter had never had any friends. It hurt him to think that his brother had kept so much from him, from them all. Had he known nothing about any of the men he had called his family?

The man stared at him sadly and then said, "I think we should all go sit down."

The four of them moved to a sitting room, also decorated in browns and owls, so much so that he could see them even through the lazy haze constantly occupying his vision. He was sensing a theme here, and if it weren't for his affliction of "can't see the obvious because he's oblivious" he would have realized it and made the connection in a heartbeat. Next to him, Logan was already fairly sure he had come to the right conclusion, but he was going to keep his mouth shut and see where things were going first.

Before the couple would tell them anything Jack had to produce his birth certificate, as he had at the prison, and prove that he was the son of Sylvia Kovacs, who public record showed as Walter's mother as well. He didn't expect the response he got.

The woman, Sandra, looked at his birth certificate, and then back up at him. She repeated the process with an expression of shocked horror, and her husband stared at him steadily with bug-eyes.

Jack raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, I know I look nothing like Walter, but you've got your proof, he was my older brother. Older by fifteen years, yeah, but still my brother. It's not _that_ shocking, so what's with the creepy faces?"

The woman gaped for a moment longer before murmuring, "Eddie Blake was your father?"

Jack stiffened and his eyes narrowed. He didn't know how this woman knew Eddie, but he knew he wasn't going to like it.

She stared for a moment longer, drew in a shuddering breath and shared a long communicative look with her husband before speaking.

"He was my father, too."

Yep, Jack knew he wouldn't like this.

(_Whore!_ indignantly cried his Walter-voice.)

Just great, he had a sister and she was a whore. Just great.

* * *

**Just as a side note – Jack isn't chauvinist or sexist; he really is afraid of women and shows it badly. A lot of the women in his life have been…less than kind to him. And the whore thing, well, he grew up with a fear of women and Rorschach. You put two and two together.**

**And another note: REVIEW!**


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